Monthly Archives: May 2007

Pitching well?

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ortiz.gifJose de Jesus Ortiz is the Chronicle’s beat writer for the Stros, but curiously, the newspaper allows Ortiz to provide subjective blather about the club and its players rather than objective analysis. Get a load of Ortiz’s latest on the reeling Stros:

The pitching staff has actually been good, considering Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte are gone and Jason Jennings has been on the disabled list most of the season. Pitching coach Dave Wallace has aided the development of rookie Chris Sampson and Wandy Rodriguez, who have stepped up and helped ace Roy Oswalt lead the rotation while veteran Woody Williams tries to get back on track and Jennings works his injured right elbow back into shape.

“The pitching staff has actually been good?” Here are the facts.
The Stros pitching staff overall has allowed 15 more runs than a merely average National League pitching staff would have given up through 48 games of the season, which rates 11th among the 16 National League pitching staffs. Two fifths of the rotation — Woody Williams (-11 RSAA) and Matt Albers (-9 RSAA) have been among the worst starting pitchers in the National League this season, while another starter — Wandy Rodriguez (-2 RSAA this season) — has been one of the worst starting pitchers in the National League (-38 RSAA) over the past two and a third seasons. In just the past week, reliever Rick White has given up 9 more runs in his appearances than an average NL pitcher would have given up and fellow reliever Brian Moehler has surrendered 8 more runs than an average NL pitcher would have given up pitching the same number of innings. I wonder if Ortiz thinks that Stros pitching coach Dave Wallace “has aided the development” of those pitchers?
Meanwhile, in the same article, Ortiz bashes the Stros anemic hitters, which is certainly legitimate criticism. However, although those hitters have generated 16 fewer runs than a lineup of average NL hitters would have created using the same number of outs, than output is only one run less than the -15 RSAA of the pitching staff. So, using objective criteria, the Stros pitching staff overall has been every bit as bad as the Stros hitters so far this season, which is the point that Ortiz should be making.
Adding this latest Ortiz column to a couple of dubious previous ones (here and here), a good case can be made that Ortiz is having every bit as bad a season writing about the Stros as the Stros are having on the field.

The PGA Tour’s Texas Mess

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PGA_TourLogo052706.gifThe Tiger Chasm has had an extremely detrimental effect on the Texas PGA Tour events (see here and here). Texas golf writer Art Stricklin picks up on that theme in this Golf.com op-ed in which he points out that the PGA Tour has forsaken the four Texas events that contribute more to charity than virtually any other Tour events:

There used to be something on Tour called the Texas swing, during which three of the four events in the Lone Star State ó the Houston Open, the Byron Nelson and the Colonial ó were played in near succession. (The Texas Open was usually held later in the year.)
The proximity in dates and distance of the tournaments added to their appeal because a pro could stay in a single state, albeit a big one, for almost a month. The events also had long traditions and famous frontmen. Jack Burke Jr. remains Houston’s Mr. Golf, an honorific bestowed in Dallas on the late Byron Nelson (who personally rounded up player commitments) and in Fort Worth (home of the Colonial) on the legendary Ben Hogan.
Further, all of the Texas tournaments have been good to charity. According to several tournament directors, in 2006 the Texas Open ranked first on Tour in charitable contributions with $7 million, while the Nelson was third ($6.3 million), Houston fifth ($4.5 million), and the Colonial kicked in $2.6 million. That’s $20 million from Texas. [. . .]
The Tour applauded itself for taking Texas’s money but returned the favor with four lousy spots on the schedule.
The Houston Open, which has never been graced by Tiger Woods, was moved to the week before the Masters, always a dark period for the No. 1 player in the world. The Nelson, with its prime mid-May date reassigned to the Tour-owned Players Championship, was stuck in a late-April pit, and the results were predictable: Of the top 15 players only Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh, Luke Donald and Sergio Garcia showed up ó especially lamentable because this was the first Nelson since the death of its namesake.
This week’s Colonial was cast into the late-May lull between the Players and Jack Nicklaus’s Memorial, and at press time only one top 10 player had committed.
But these events are prime compared with the Texas Open, consigned to the worst fate of all: the irrelevance of the post-FedEx Cup fall season.
Maybe the commissioner really believes that what a tournament gives away matters, and that on the PGA Tour doing good is as important as doing well. No one in Texas does anymore.

The PGA Tour is in real trouble in Texas. Is anyone in the PGA Tour office listening?

We have a winner for EGL

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Ceva.jpgAfter four months of bidding, CEVA Group PLC — a UK public limited company owned by affiliates of New York City-based Apollo Management LP — has emerged as the winner for Houston-based logistics company EGL, Inc. over the management led-private equity bid championed by EGL chairman and CEO, Jim Crane (prior posts here). Although his private equity buyout failed, Crane is certainly not a loser on the deal. His 17.4% stake in EGL has increased in value by about 60% over the past four months, which means his EGL stock has increased in value by about $125 million to around $337 million. Not exactly a bitter pill to swallow.
Although the winning bid in this type of competition is always interesting, a fascinating development was revealed yesterday in a Schedule 13D/A that EGL filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Get a load of this:

EXPLANATORY NOTES: This Amendment No. 8 to Schedule 13D (this “Amendment”) is being filed by James R. Crane and the other reporting persons (collectively, the “Reporting Persons”) signatory hereto as identified in the Schedule 13D filed on January 22, 2007, . . .
The Reporting Persons wish to make clear that Mr. E. Joseph Bento, who was one of the signatories to the Schedule 13D filed on January 22, 2007 and to Amendments No. 1 through 7 thereof as previously filed, was not a signatory to Amendment No. 8 to the Schedule 13D and is not a signatory to this Amendment.
The Reporting Persons have excluded Mr. Bento as a signatory and as a member of the group because they believe, based on reliable information, that Mr. Bento, while purporting to cooperate with the Reporting Persons in their offer to acquire the Issuer, in fact has been secretly and improperly cooperating with Apollo Management VI, L.P. and its portfolio company, CEVA Group Plc (collectively, “Apollo/CEVA”) in the competing offer by Apollo/CEVA to acquire the Issuer.
The Reporting Persons further believe, based on reliable information that, while holding himself out to the Reporting Persons as a person cooperating with the Reporting Persons’ bid for the Issuer, Mr. Bento in fact has, without the prior knowledge of or permission from the Reporting Persons, improperly shared confidential information relating to the Reporting Persons’ bidding strategy and other confidential information regarding the Reporting Persons’ offer to acquire the Issuer. The Reporting Persons cannot give any assurance that prior statements of Mr. Bento in the Schedule 13D as to his intentions were in fact truthful and accurate.
The Reporting Persons intend to explore all appropriate remedies, including legal action for damages and other relief, that they may have against Mr. Bento.

Well, you certainly don’t read excerpts like that every day while perusing SEC filings!
It’s a bit difficult to know at this point what the claim against Berto would be. It would not appear that EGL or its shareholders have been damaged by anything the Berto is alleged to have done. Although Crane’s group may have been hurt in its effort to become the winning bid by information that Berto supposedly provided to Apollo/CEVA, it’s not as if Crane and his group were prevented from continuing to bid on the company. That Crane and his group might have been the successful bidder at a lower price but for Berto’s supposed leaking of confidential information doesn’t seem like much of a basis for a lawsuit because that lower bid would have come at the expense of EGL’s shareholders to whom Crane and his management team still owed a fiduciary duty. So, we’ll just have to stay tuned on that potential litigation front.
At any rate, one has to tip their hat to EGL’s Special Committee of the Board of Directors, its counsel (Andrews & Kurth) and its financial advisors (Deutsche Bank) — they really played these two competing bidders off on each other brilliantly. Although at first CEVA/Apollo appeared to be a tire-kicker, they turned out to be a motivated buyer because EGL represented a special opportunity to acquire a substantial freight forwarding business that could be integrated with CEVA’s existing contract logistics business. On the other hand, EGL was Crane’s baby, so the board knew that his group would also fight hard to retain control. In the end, Apollo/CEVA paid an extremely favorable price for a company that has not been doing all that well over the past couple of years and certainly was not considered a hot property in the marketplace. EGL shareholders did not quite get their 52-week high stock price of $51.49, but they did end up receiving almost a 60% premium on their $29.78 share price when this all started.
Suffice it to say that such a premium would have been realized had Ben Stein been calling the shots.

And you think the Stros are bad?

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TexasRangers_NewLogo.jpgAs the Stros wander off to their second losing season in the past 15 seasons (21-26 record, lost 6 of their last 7), this earlier post reminded that it could be much worse. Along those same lines, it’s comforting to read this Jim Reeves/Ft. Worth Star Telegram op-ed confirming that the other Texas Major League club continues to toil in its perpetual state of futility:

What’s happened to the Rangers (18-29) this season isn’t one man’s failure, or even two. This is an organization-wide travesty that starts at the top with [owner Tom] Hicks himself. Most of all, it’s a players’ failure and for anyone who cares to debate that point, I refer you to the team’s .248 batting average, 5.15 team ERA and 39 errors going into Monday night’s homestand opener against the Twins. Argue with those numbers, if you can.
Of course, this is all Greek to Hicks, who just happens to be in Greece this week to see his Liverpool soccer team play. Guess he figured his baseball team could continue to fall apart without him. Or maybe he just wanted to see a real offense at work.
Absence, in this case, definitely makes the heart grow fonder.
Hicks is the root cause of many of the Rangers’ problems, whether he’ll admit it or not, and not all of it even has to do with the fact that he spends money like he owns a team in Tampa or Kansas City instead of a top 10 market.
It was Hicks who hired the youngest and rawest general manager in baseball history and didn’t insist that he at least add a veteran baseball voice as a sounding board in the front office. Then the owner compounded the problem by signing off on a manager with absolutely zero major league managerial experience.

Gosh, the plight of the Rangers makes a starting rotation that includes Woody Williams, Matt Albers (mercifully demoted yesterday to AAA Round Rock) and Wandy Rodriguez almost seem tolerable.

Checking in on the annual Cannes Vanity Fair Party

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Festival%20de%20Cannes.jpgReports on the social affairs surrounding the Cannes Film Festival don’t usually interest me much, but WaPo’s William Booth does a great job of placing the annual Vanity Fair party in perspective:

The annual Vanity Fair Oscar party in Los Angeles is now an institution filled to the rafters with Hollywood celebrities, our celebrities, the ones in our tabloids. This Cannes VF gig is different. Here it’s London socialite Jemima Khan, the ex-wife of Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan, daughter of Lady Annabel Goldsmith. She’s hot. She’s smart. She’s rich. She’s huge. But we are going to confess this as an innocent abroad: We kinda had to Google her.

Read the entire clever piece.

The DOJ’s threat to go “Arthur Andersen” on Dynegy

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dynegy%20logo%20052407.jpgThis post from last week reported on how a recent civil lawsuit against Dynegy, Inc. involved issues relating to the Justice Department’s 2003 threat to indict the company that contributed dramatically to the barbaric prosecution and prison sentence of former mid-level Dynegy executive, Jamie Olis. The evidence from that trial is now slowly filtering out and reveals a systematic effort by federal prosecutors to interfere with Olis’ defense of the government’s charges. The following is from a Platt’s.com‘s ($) Gas Daily:

The CEO of Dynegy, who four years ago cooperated with a fraud investigation that resulted in a former colleague getting a six-year prison sentence, feared at the time that prosecutors might deal Dynegy a fatal blow by seeking a criminal indictment against the firm.
According to transcripts from a late-April trial, [Dynegy CEO] Bruce Williamson testified that after a January 2003 meeting with the US attorney, ìI walked out of there a few pounds lighter. An indictment clearly would have put the company out of business.î [. . .]
Williamson testified for three days in late April about his thought process in 2003 as the US Attorneyís office in Houston was preparing an investigation into Project Alpha ó a probe that led to the conviction of Olis and two other former employees.
At the time of the Project Alpha inquiry, Williamson had been on the job just a few months, having been named CEO in October 2002 when Dynegy was facing severe liquidity and credit problems and its future as a viable company was in doubt.
Lloyd Kelley, Yatesí attorney, told Platts last week that prosecutors, under the direction of then-US Attorney Michael Shelby, pressured Williamson and other Dynegy officials to cut off support to Olis and other ex-employees under investigation or face the prospect of a criminal indictment against the company itself.
ìShelby basically threatened Dynegy, and Williamson agreed to do whatever the government wanted, which meant they would order people to give testimony,î Kelley maintained. ìThey had to waive their Fifth Amendment privilege, waive attorney-client privilege.î
According to the transcripts of last monthís trial, Williamson testified that in early January 2003, he arranged a meeting at Shelbyís office after receiving a letter from Shelby indicating his displeasure with Dynegyís lack of cooperation into the Project Alpha investigation.
ìI wouldnít say it frightened me, but it was another issue along with all the debt that we needed to pay off, along with a FERC investigation, a Commodity Futures Trading Commission investigation, all the other things going on,î he testified.
Williamson said he feared that a criminal indictment against Dynegy on the heels of mass layoffs would have ìshut the company downî by forcing the departure of the firmís remaining 1,400 employees. An indictment never came. Williamson told the court that he took a hard line against any current or former Dynegy employee being investigated by the government.
ìIím not going to give people the presumption of innocence,î he said. ìAnybody on that list needs to be investigated fully and we needed to determine whether they were guilty or not. If they are, they need to leave the company. If they are going to be indicted, they need to leave the company. If there is a doubt, they need to leave the company,î Williamson testified. . .
Don DeGabrielle, the current US Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, told Platts that his predecessor, who died last July, did nothing wrong in his prosecution of the Project Alpha case. . . .

It’s a sad sign of our times that federal authorities deem “nothing wrong” with threatening to put a company out of business for merely defending its employees. Despite the recent jury verdict against Dynegy, Williamson and the Dynegy board did the correct thing for the company’s shareholders by tossing Olis to the wolves — having to pay several million in damages for failing to subsidize Olis’ defense costs is peanuts compared to the billions in damages that would have resulted from a Dynegy bankruptcy. But Dynegy’s board should never have been forced to make that Draconian choice in the first place. In the face of such interference with Olis’ defense, the prosecution of Olis should have never been allowed to proceed. Peter Henning reports that the latest development in the KPMG case is prompting Judge Kaplan to confront the same issue in that case (Larry Ribstein also comments here). Here’s hoping that the injustice heaped upon Jamie Olis helps lead Judge Kaplan to the correct decision.

Pros and Cons of the Top 20
Democratic Party Presidential Candidates

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donkey2.gifJohn Moe provides the fun. My favorite:

5. JOE BIDEN
Pro: Technically still running for president.
Con: Dude. Come on.

Proof that Texas legislators don’t have enough to do

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phys%20ed.jpgThe lead in to this Ft. Worth Star Telegram article is a dead giveaway that Texas legislators are in a “throw the money around” mood as they near the end of the legislative session:

Many Texas students are too fat, experts say, and face future health problems because of their poor fitness. This week, the Legislature may weigh whether a new annual fitness test can help whip them into better shape. Fitness guru Dr. Kenneth Cooper of Dallas teamed up with Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, to author legislation that would require schools to monitor students’ health to prevent childhood obesity . . .
According to the bill, students in kindergarten through fifth grade must have ìmoderate or vigorous” activity for 30 minutes each day. Students in grades six, seven and eight must have physical activity 30 minutes a day for four semesters. Additionally, schools must annually assess the physical fitness of students in grades three through eight. Under the legislation, the Texas Education Agency would be asked to adopt a testing tool that measures aerobic capacity, body composition, muscular strength, endurance and flexibility.
According to the bill, the TEA must also analyze the data for a correlation between physical fitness and academic achievement, attendance, disciplinary problems and obesity . . .
The wording in the bill that describes the required testing tool mirrors language on the Web site for Cooper’s FitnessGram, developed in 1982 to measure health and fitness levels of children . . . The FitnessGram would cost about $230 for each child when purchased from its distributor, Human Kinetics. The nonprofit Cooper Institute receives $30 from each sale.

Sandy Szwarc nicely sums up the skimpy clinical evidence upon which the above-described legislation is based:

The bottom line was that [Harvard School of Public Health] researchers were not able to clearly establish a direction between fitness and overweight. Meaning, the slightly lower levels of athleticism among heavier children didnít necessarily point to that as being the cause for their size, nor that trying to turn them into better athletes will make them slimmer.
There is no credible evidence that the levels of physical activity and fitness among fat children are less than thinner kids to explain their diversity in sizes. There is no credible evidence that school or after-school physical activity programs reduce obesity among children. The medical evidence long ago demonstrated that heredity and genes account for aerobic capacity, upper body strength and athletic prowess. Researchers have also found that different children have different physical aptitudes, just like academic and artistic abilities. Research, for example, in the journal of the North Association for the Study of Obesity, Obesity Research, found that ìobeseî and nonobese school kids had similar levels of physical activity, while nonobese boys engaged in more sports. The fat children did poorer on propulsion tasks, but showed greater grip strength and similar scores with the other kids on overall fitness.

Checking in on the NBA

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yao_300_051215.jpgRockets owner Les Alexander doesn’t have a clue on how to fire a coach properly, but most of Yao Ming’s fans are happy with the move, anyway.
Meanwhile, NBA Commissioner David Stern’s absurdly stubborn ruling last week that effectively derailed the Phoenix Suns’ chances of defeating the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference semi-finals has reinforced the overall lack of competitive balance in the NBA:

Of the 30 current N.B.A. teams, 14 have never won a championship. Five franchises ó Celtics, Lakers, Bulls, Pistons and Spurs ó have won 70 percent of all titles. Although the Celtics and the Lakers were not serious contenders this season, with the defeat of the Mavericks, there is a better chance that the Bulls, the Pistons or the Spurs will once again be crowned champions.
This pattern, in which the same franchises keep taking the leagueís top prize, is not seen in other sports. In the past 20 years, 11 different N.H.L. teams have hoisted the Stanley Cup. In the N.F.L., 12 different teams have won the Super Bowl. And in baseball, the league in which competitive balance is perpetually thought to be a problem, 14 different teams have won the World Series in the past two decades.

The reason for the imbalance? Somewhat surprisingly, it’s simple demographics. Read Dave Berri’s explanation here.
Speaking of demographics, did you know that the Spurs are having trouble selling tickets to the Western Conference Finals games against Utah?
Moreover, Kevin Grier over at MR proposes these common sense modifications to the NBA, to which I would add including all teams to the playoffs and using the regular season schedule to seed the playoffs and provide weighted home court advantage (say, the first three home games and the final two in a seven game series) for the first couple of playoff rounds.

Now that’s a low blow!

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Rice%20billboard.jpgThis earlier post regarding the Texas-OU rivalry noted Jay Christensen’s clever college football digital billboard contest over at the sporting Wizard of Odds. The likes of Texas and Oklahoma have pretty thick hides, but now the competition has generated this billboard on little Rice University, which is still trying to figure out how to profit from being a sacrificial lamb in the big-time college football wars. I don’t think this particular billboard will be the basis of the Owls’ advertising campaign for the upcoming football season. ;^)