Longtime Houston attorney Tom Kirkendall's observations on developments in law, business, medicine, culture, sports, and other matters of general interest to the Houston business, professional, and academic communities.
As the Stros’ hitters continue to strand baserunners by the dozens, most of you are undoubtedly having to endure comments on the radio and elsewhere such as “the Stros are not good at hitting in the clutch” or they “are not good at situational hitting.”
As this hilarious Fire Joe Morgan post explains, those comments are mostly blather. Extensive statistical analysis of baseball statistics over the years has shown that there is rarely any meaningful difference between a hitter’s performance in “clutch” versus “non-clutch” situations. Rather, a combination of bad luck and weak overall hitting are the true reasons why teams go through periods such as the Stros are enduring now in which they leave a large number of runners on base.
The fact that the Stros are 10th out of the 16 National League clubs in both on-base average and slugging percentage has much more to do with the Stros leaving a large number of runners on base than any lack of “clutch hitting.” By the way, after Sunday’s loss, that $100 million off-season acquisition, slugger Carlos Lee, has generated 5 fewer runs than a merely average National League hitter would have created using the same number of outs as Lee has made so far this season, a .290 on-base average and a paltry .738 OPS.
Michael Pollan, the Knight professor of journalism at the Cal-Berkeley and the author of ìThe Omnivoreís Dilemmaî (earlier post here), has been writing a series of op-eds for the New York Times in which he is addressing in an abbreviated manner various nutritional issues that he covers in his book. In this recent piece, Pollan examines why calorie-intensive processed foods have such a relatively cheap price at the supermarket in comparison to fresh fruits and vegetables:
For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system ó indeed, to a considerable extent, for the worldís food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root. Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat ó three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades ó indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning ó U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy.
Thatís because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a/k/a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.
As noted in this earlier post, Chronicle sportswriter Richard Justice was a devoted supporter of the Charlie Casserly tenure as Texans general manager far beyond the time that most reasoned observers had concluded that Texans ship was leaking profusely. After the Texans bottomed out at the end of their horrid 2005 season, Justice finally turned on Casserly with the same vehemance that he previously used in supporting him. Since then, Justice has routinely mocked Casserly and former Texans coach, Dom Capers.
Now, on the heels of this weekend’s NFL Draft, Justice is drinking the Kool-Aid again with regard to the tenure of the Gary Kubiak/Rick Smith regime with the Texans:
The Texans are going to be a long time escaping their past. But these are not the Texans of 2004 or 2005. Check the facts. They haven’t done a single dumb thing since Charley Casserly left the organization. Not one. They’ll win your confidence only by winning on the field. That’s why next season will be interesting.
H’mm. Kubiak and Smith haven’t done “a single dumb thing” since taking over? That offense from last season sure could have fooled one into thinking that Kubiak and Smith had done a “dumb thing” or two since coming on the scene.
Frankly, my sense is that the Texans draft this year was rather underwhelming (an opinion shared by one local draft expert). Okoye, the number one draft choice, is a fairly raw 19 year old playing at a position (defensive tackle) in which he will be pitted against wily veterans; it’s by no mean certain that he will be any more successful next season than first round draft choice Mario Williams was last season. The Texans next draft choice — third round WR Jacoby Jones (the Texans didn’t have a second round pick) — does not even appear likely to start next season. In fact, absent injury, none of the Texans’ 2007 draft choices outside of Okoye are sure bets to be in the starting lineup for the Texans next season.
Granted, it might actually be a good thing if most of the Texans’ 2007 draft choices aren’t expected to start next season because that would indicate that the Texans are developing the type of depth that is necessary to contend for the playoffs in the NFL. Likewise, those draft choices cannot be fairly evaluated for several years. But Justice’s chronic cheerleading for the Texans is better left for the team’s website, not for a newspaper that is supposedly dedicated to providing objective analysis of news events.
Today is the beginning of the annual two-day media feeding frenzy known as the National Football League Draft, which I’m beginning to think is becoming more popular than the NFL games themselves. Channeling research about the draft that was addressed in this earlier post, the WSJ’s ($) Allen St. John notes that football fans should not be as concerned with what star players take in the first couple of rounds, but rather should focus on the hidden gems that their team takes in the later rounds:
So, in general, how well does the NFL draft do in finding future stars? A look at the All-Pro teams of the past five years reveals some surprises. Of the 80 position players who made the All-Pro teams since 2002, 35, or 44%, were not drafted in the first round. That means that practically every NFL team passed on them at least once. And 21 All-Pros weren’t picked until the third round — or later.
How many No. 1 draft picks were All-Pros over that period? One: Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts. Five players who went totally undrafted — running back Priest Holmes, tight end Antonio Gates, fullback Mack Strong, center Jeff Saturday and offensive lineman Brian Waters — earned that honor. [. . .]
Even more important than spending first-round picks wisely is being able to tab superstars in the later rounds. To measure that we’ll use APDA, or All-Pro Draft Average, which averages the overall draft slot for a team’s All-Pros. (Undrafted players are ranked as if they were taken after the last player drafted that year.)
Which team found the most diamonds in the rough? The San Diego Chargers — with an 80.3 ranking. They selected four All-Pros after round two, including Mr. Gates, a three-time All-Pro. The Ravens were next at 70.9, thanks largely to drafting linebacker Adalius Thomas in the sixth round and signing undrafted running back Priest Holmes (who would achieve fame with the Kansas City Chiefs). The NFC leader: the Panthers (40.8), followed by the New York Giants (36.5). [. . .]
So if your favorite team doesn’t have a top pick, don’t sweat it. APDA reveals that in today’s NFL, potential superstars are available in the second round — or second day of the draft. The trick, as the league’s most successful teams know, is to find them.
Although the Texans drafts are routinely trashed in the mainstream media, the Texans drafted All-Pros in WR Andre Johnson, KR Jerome Mathis, and LB DeMeco Ryans, a potentially All-Pro caliber CB in Dunta Robinson, and have had a reasonable degree of success in picking decent players in the later rounds. On the other hand, the Texans’ non-draft acquisitions (think Tony Boselli and Philip Buchanan) have been unproductive, which has a lot more to do with the team’s relative lack of success than the team’s draft picks.
Finally, if you still think that the Texans’ first round draft picks have been bad, take a look at this hilarious video of the announcements over the years pertaining to the New York Jets draft picks:
The first 21 games of the season of the Stros’ (9-12) season has been one of streaks — they started out the season by losing 5 of their first 6 games, rebounded momentarily by winning 8 of their next 9, only to blow that comeback by losing their next 6. As a result, the excuses of the club’s spotty performance are already in full bloom:
“Berkman and Lee haven’t started hitting yet.”
“If Jennings comes back strong, the starting pitching will be fine.”
“Burke is a good athlete who will find his way in centerfield.”
“Biggio is such an inspiration.”
Well, maybe all those statements are true. But the harsh reality is that this is not a good baseball team right now.
As noted in the 2007 season preview, none of this is particularlry surprising. Despite catching lightning in a bottle in the post-season during 2004 and 2005, the Stros have been trending downward for most of this decade into the current mediocre edition of the club. During most of that time, reasonably strong pitching tended to mask the decline in the club’s overall hitting.
However, through the first eighth of this season, both the hitting and the pitching on this Stros club have serious questions. The Stros’ hitters have already generated 13 fewer runs than an average National League club would have scored using the same number of outs at this stage of the season (RCAA, explained here), which ranks 10th out of the 16 National League teams (the NL Central-leading Brewers are at +18 RCAA). The pitching staff has been about as bad, saving 7 fewer runs already than an average National League staff would have saved so far this season (RSAA, explained here), which ranks 13th among National League clubs.
The season statistics through to date are below, courtesy of Lee Sinins‘ sabermetric Complete Baseball Encyclopedia. The abbreviations for the hitting stats are defined here and the same for the pitching stats are here:
Houston-based oil field services provider Baker Hughes Inc. on Thursday announced that it has agreed to pay $44.1 million to settle the Department of Justice and the SEC’s long-standing allegations that a unit of the company had violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Under the terms of deal, a subsidiary of the company pleaded guilty to violations of the FCPA regarding payments made to a commercial agent in Kazakhstan between 2001 and 2003, the company entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice that provides that federal government will not prosecute the company if it meets the conditions of the agreement for two years (including a government-approved monitor to oversee its compliance efforts), and the company agreed to a consent judgment with the SEC, which charged violations of the anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA related to the Kazakhstan deal.
The company announced the govenment probes publicly almost five years ago and the probe was well-known within the Houston legal community even before that. Sometimes delay really is the best strategy.
The NY Times’ John Tierney, who has done an outstanding job of covering the sad case of Dr. William Hurwitz, provides this insightful post on the utter lack of a motive for Dr. Hurwitz to commit the crime for which he is being prosecuted — i.e., violating America’s drug prohibition policy:
Prosecutors charged that Dr. William Hurwitz was in a conspiracy with some of his patients to illegally distribute drugs, but there was no evidence that the patients had shared the profits when they resold the painkillers he prescribed. The only money he got was from the medical fees he charged. The prosecutors tried to portray his practice as a lucrative operation, and him as a doctor motivated by greed. This is a bit hard to square with what the jury heard about his background. which included stints in the Peace Corps and the Veterans Administration. And itís really hard to square with his bank account.
In 2003, before the charges in this case had even been brought against him, authorities seized Dr. Hurwitzís assets. (Thatís standard procedure in drug cases like this, and one more reason why doctors have such a hard time mounting a defense.) There wasnít much to seize. They took all his retirement savings ó which amounted to less than $250,000. He was at that point 58 years old and had been practicing medicine for decades. . . .
ìItís so ridiculous to hear the prosecutor talk about this rich doctor,î Mrs. [Nilse] Quercia [Dr. Hurwitz’s former wife] told me. ìExcept for that Keough account they seized, he had nothing but debts and a 1990 Subaru.î His subsequent legal expenses, she said, were paid by friends and relatives and by the law firms now representing him pro bono.
In my experience, when a prosecutor must fabricate a motive for the white collar criminal act that is being prosecuted, it’s a pretty darn good indication that a lack of prosecutorial discretion is behind the decision to pursue the charges in the first place.
Based on this Rolling Stone obituary, it’s a safe bet that the family of Boris Yeltsin will not be hiring Matt Tabbi to write the official biography of the late former Russian premier:
Boris Yeltsin was literally born in mud and raised in shit. He was descended from a long line of drunken peasants who in hundreds of years of non-trying had failed to escape the stinky-ass backwater of the Talitsky region, a barren landscape of mud and weeds whose history is so undistinguished that even the most talented Russian historians struggle to find mention of it in imperial documents. They did find Yeltsins here and there in the Czarist censuses, but until the 20th century none made any mark in history. The best of the lot turned out to be Boris’s grandfather, a legendarily mean and greedy old prick named Ignatiy Yeltsin, who achieved what was considered great wealth by village standards, owning a mill and a horse. Naturally, the flesh-devouring Soviet government, the government that would later make Boris Yeltsin one of its favored and feared vampires, liquidated Ignatiy for the crime of affluence, for the crime of having a mill and a horse. [. . .]
The communist government found its leaders among the meanest and greediest of the children who survived and thrived in places like this. Boris Yeltsin was such a child. As a teenager he only knew two things; how to drink vodka and smash people in the face. At the very first opportunity he joined up with the communists who had liquidated his grandfather and persecuted his father and became a professional thief and face-smasher, rising quickly through the communist ranks to become a boss of the Sverdlovsk region, where he was again famous for two things: his heroic drinking and his keen political sense in looting and distributing the booty from Soviet highway and construction contracts. If Boris Yeltsin ever had a soul, it was not observable in his early biography. He sold out as soon as he could and was his whole life a human appendage of a rotting, corrupt state, a crook who would emerge even from the hottest bath still stinking of booze, concrete and sausage.
My, what a flurry of activity with regard to Apple.
First, the San Jose Mercury News reports last weekend that Apple CEO Steve Jobs appeared to be in the clear of the risk of criminal charges in regard to the investigation into backdating of stock options at Apple.
Next, on Tuesday, Dealbreaker’s John Carney noted that two former Apple executives in the crosshairs of the SEC’s parallel investigation — general counsel Nancy Heinen and CFO Fred Anderson — are taking very different approaches to dealing with the investigation.
On one hand, Heinen is fighting the SEC charges, while Anderson has settled up with the SEC.
But then, in a somewhat unusual development in such matters, Anderson proceeded to issue a public statement that appears to contradict Jobs’ story that he didn’t really understand the implications of this whole backdating thing.
Finally, after all this, Apple’s stock price went through the roof on Wednesday on the heels of strong second quarter earnings.
Indeed, it may be that all this backdating stuff really is all about stock price. When the alleged backdating was going on at Apple, the stock was hovering at around 20. Under several more years of Jobs leadership, it’s up over 90. Backdating could bring it back to 20.
As the Stros’ hitters continue to strand baserunners by the dozens, most of you are undoubtedly having to endure comments on the radio and elsewhere such as “the Stros are not good at hitting in the clutch” or they “are not good at situational hitting.”
My, what a flurry of activity with regard to Apple.