Monthly Archives: May 2011

No more exaggerated fish stories?

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freshwater-fly-fishing-b06So, you mean to tell me that now even exaggerated fishing stories are criminal?

That’s what the Texas Tribune is reporting (H/T Scott Henson):

Fraudulent fishermen better reel it in. The Senate passed a bill today to make cheating in a fishing tournament up to a third-degree felony, sending the measure on to the governor.

HB 1806 expands existing law to all fishing tournaments, from fresh to salt water. It would make it an offense for contestants to give, take, offer or accept a fish not caught as part of the tournament. It would also be an offense to misrepresent a fish.

“I’ve never altered the length of a fish,” says Sen. Glenn Hegar, R-Katy, the Senate sponsor of the bill. But he’s been told fishermen will cut the tail off a fish so it will fit the minimum length requirement. That way, they can add more fish to their bucket.

For minor tournaments, cheaters could be charged with a Class A misdemeanor and face up to a year in jail or a maximum $4,000 fine. But if the prize is more than $10,000, contestants could be charged with a third-degree felony, spend two to 10 years in prison and pay up to a $10,000 fine. 

As Henson observes, Senator Hegar and the Texas Legislature apparently have not noticed the onerous overcriminalization that they and other legislative bodies have been imposed on U.S. citizens:

Texas had 2,383  felonies when the session started. No telling yet how many new ones the Lege will pass this year, but Grits’ pre-session prediction was 55. Nobody really tallies them all comprehensively until the parole board must assign new felonies risk categories later this year. But there are a bunch of them. You’d never know the Lege is broke because they seem to think more incarceration can solve any and every social problem: Even dishonest, exaggerating fishermen.

A truly civil society would find a better way.

A Stros snapshot

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Houston_Astros2Through only 34 games, it’s premature to characterize this season’s Astros team (13-21) as one of the worst in club history. There are actually some hopeful signs. However, a main trend line is not looking good.

As regular readers of this blog know, I like to use the RCAA ("runs created against average") and RSAA ("runs saved against average") statistics — developed by Lee Sinins for his Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia — to provide a simple but revealing picture of how an MLB club or player is performing relative to other teams or players in a particular league.

RCAA reflects how many more (or fewer) runs that a team (or player) generates relative to a league-average team (or player). An exactly league-average team’s (or player’s) RCAA is zero. Thus, an above-average hitter has a positive RCAA and a below-average hitter has a negative RCAA.

Similarly, RSAA measures how many more (or fewer) runs that a pitching staff (or an individual pitcher) saves relative to a league-average pitching staff (or pitcher). As with RCAA, an exactly league-average pitcher’s (or team’s) RSAA is zero, an above-average pitcher has a positive RSAA, and a below-average pitcher has a negative RSAA.

RCAA and RSAA are particularly useful because they provide a useful benchmark comparison across eras because it shows how much better (or worse) a team’s hitters and pitchers stacked up against an average team of hitters or pitcher staff during a season. That’s really the best way to compare teams from different eras because comparing other hitting and pitching statistics — such as on-base average, slugging percentage, OPS, earned run average, wins and hitting statistics against — is often skewed between teams of hitter-friendly eras (i.e., up until this season, the past 20 seasons or so) versus pitchers of pitcher-friendly eras (i.e., such as the late 1960’s and early 70’s).

As regular readers of this blog know, the Stros have not had an above-average team RCAA in any season since 2004, bottoming out with last season’s abysmal hitting club that generated 86 fewer runs than an average National League club would have produced using the same number of outs. That was the fifth worst performance in club history.

However, even without Lance Berkman this season, the Stros have a team 13 RCAA – a slightly-above average team relative to other NL clubs. Inasmuch as the Cardinals (and particularly Berkman) are the only club really hitting well so far this season, the Stros team RCAA ranks fifth in the NL. Here are the individual RCAA of the Stros hitters:

T1   Brett Wallace             9  
T1   Jason Bourgeois         9  
T3   Hunter Pence             6  
T3   J.R. Towles                 6  
5     Michael Bourn            3  
6     Matt Downs                1  
7     Brian Bogusevic          0  
T8   Clint Barmes              -2  
T8   Joe Inglett                  -2  
T8   Jason Michaels            -2   
T11 Humberto Quintero    -3   
T11 Carlos Lee                   -3   
13   Bill Hall                       -4  
14   Chris Johnson              -5  

So, no on is striping the ball as well as Berkman (23 RCAA), but Wallace, Bourgeois, Pence and Towles are off to good starts and most everyone else has managed either to be about or modestly-below league-average. The question is whether this group can keep up that kind of production.

But the ominous signs are coming from the pitching staff, which has given up an astounding 51 more runs than an average NL pitching staff 34 games into this season. That level of ineptitude has real consequences.

This club’s pitching staff’s performance to date is already tied for the 14th worst performance in club history and is 28 more runs given up than the next worst staff (the Dodgers) this season. Here are the individual RSAA:

1     Mark Melancon              3  
T2   Bud Norris                   1  
T2   Jeff Fulchino                1  
T4   Aneury Rodriguez       -1  
T4   Wilton Lopez              -1  
T6   Enerio Del Rosario      -3  
T6   Wandy Rodriguez        -3  
T8   Fernando Abad            -5  
T8   Brett Myers                   -5  
T8   Brandon Lyon               -5  
11   Jose Valdez                    -6  
12   J.A. Happ                      -10  
13   Nelson Figueroa            -17   

In short, only three Stros pitchers have been above-National League average so far this season and then only barely so. Happ and Figueroa – at least until the latter was banished to the bullpen – have been among the worst starting pitchers in the NL so far this season.

Is it likely that the staff will turn it around? Over the past several seasons, Rodriguez has pitched better as the season has worn on, so there is hope there. And Myers and Happ are certainly capable of improving their RSAA over the balance of the season, although both have been inconsistent from season to season throughout their career. So, don’t be surprised if they have a bad season this year.

What’s my prediction at this point?

It looks as if this club is similar to the 2007 team, which finished 73-89 with a precisely league-average hitting team, but a pitching staff that posted a horrifying -79 RSAA (Woody Williams, Matt Albers and Jason Jennings all posted over -20 RSAA that season). Frankly, based on the club’s performance to date, 73 wins is looking pretty good.

But even that awful 2007 club had Roy Oswalt with a 24 RSAA and Chad Qualls with an 11 RSAA and I don’t see any sure bets on the 2011 club’s pitching staff who can rival those performances. So, there is real chance that this club’s pitching staff will get worse than it has already been.

Folks, if that happens, then this season could get very ugly.

Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out

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There are few better ways to start the week than listening to Josh White and his daughter.

Seve Ballesteros, R.I.P.

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seve-thumb-400x300-155921

Seve Ballesteros – the most creative professional golfer of our time — finally lost his battle with brain cancer yesterday at the age of 54. Geoff Shackelford does his usual comprehensive job of cataloging the tributes (see also here) to the iconic Spaniard. Also, don’t miss this Jaime Diaz/Golf Digest interview of Ballesteros from last year as he reflected on his career and life.

With six Europeans (including the top three) in the current top 10 players in the World Golf Rankings, it’s fully evident that impact that Ballesteros had on the development of European golf. It is not a stretch to say that his influence on the European Tour was every bit as dramatic as that of Arnold Palmer on the PGA Tour.

Ballesteros’ style was quite similar to that of Phil Mickelson – a risk-taker who combined a sometimes out-of-control swing with a phenomenal short game to win five major championships (two Masters and three Open Championships). However, Ballesteros was somewhat different in that he burst on the scene as a teenager — he won the Dutch Open at the age of 19 and the led the European Order of Merit at the ages of 19-21.  He was 22 when he won his first Open Championship in 1979 and he was just turning 23 when he was the first European to win The Masters. At the time, he was the youngest golfer to win the Masters.

Those championships propelled him to an extraordinary career, but his most compelling influence may have been in regard to the Ryder Cup. When that traditional match changed format in 1979 to become a competition between the U.S. and Europe rather than U.S. vs Great Britain and Ireland match that the Americans had lost just three times in over 50 years, Ballesteros grabbed the competition by the throat and wouldn’t let go. He played eight times in the Ryder Cup, losing only 12 times in 35 matches and won the 1997 match as the Euro captain. When the Euro team dropped him for the 1981 match because he had played mostly that season on the PGA Tour, the U.S. pummeled the Euros by nine points. The Euros didn’t make that mistake again.

In addition to being the most dashing and charismatic player of his time, Ballesteros was also quite witty. Few golfers will ever forget his classic response to a question of what happened when he four-putted one of Augusta National’s lightning-fast greens during the Masters: “I miss, I miss, I miss, I make.” Or his hilarious response to a question on how was it that he took an eight on one of Augusta National’s par 4’s: “I meesed a three-footer for a seven.”

But Ballesteros was different from Mickelson in that he lost his game in his early 30’s (although not his competitive fire – remember his captaincy of the 1997 Ryder Cup?). He was 34 when he last contended at a major championship and he made his last cut at the Open Championship at the age of 37. He made his last cut at the Masters when he was 38.

For those interested in the mechanics of the golf swing, Ballesteros’ decline is fascinating. As noted swing instructor Wayne DeFranceso reverently explains in this video analysis, Ballesteros won five major championships and 87 golf tournaments around the world with a swing that contained a fundamental defect. Through his extraordinary athletic ability and amazing short game, Ballesteros was able to compensate for the swing defect.

However, as he aged, Ballesteros’ swing fault became more pronounced as he dealt with chronic back pain and his short game ebbed a bit. The combination was too much for even Ballesteros to overcome, although he searched diligently for years in an attempt to revive his career. Unfortunately, he never made it to the man in Houston who specializes in golf swing reclamation projects and who just might have helped Ballesteros compete again at the top levels of the game.

The video below is a wonderful review of Ballesteros’ career and shows what made him such a compelling character.

Rest in peace, Seve. You will be missed.

Willie Nelson, 1974

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Watch the full episode. See more Austin City Limits.

From The Rough

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The story behind the film — which is scheduled to open this fall — is here.

The train wreck of entitlements growth

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Another lucid presentation from Jeff Miron, this time on the inevitable insolvency that will result from current levels of entitlement spending:

Technophysio evolution

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Darwin2_mNobel Prize-winning economist Robert W. Fogel has been leading a research project over the past 30 years analyzing the changes in the size and shape of the human body in relation to economic, social and other changes throughout history.

As this NY Times article notes, the conclusions being reached from the project are fascinating:

“The rate of technological and human physiological change in the 20th century has been remarkable,” Mr. Fogel said .  .  . “Beyond that, a synergy between the improved technology and physiology is more than the simple addition of the two.”

This “technophysio evolution,” powered by advances in food production and public health, has so outpaced traditional evolution, the authors argue, that people today stand apart not just from every other species, but from all previous generations of Homo sapiens as well. [.  .  .]

To take just a few examples, the average adult man in 1850 in America stood about 5 feet 7 inches and weighed about 146 pounds; someone born then was expected to live until about 45. In the 1980s the typical man in his early 30s was about 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighed about 174 pounds and was likely to pass his 75th birthday.

Across the Atlantic, at the time of the French Revolution, a 30-something Frenchman weighed about 110 pounds, compared with 170 pounds now. And in Norway an average 22-year-old man was about 5 ¬Ω inches taller at the end of the 20th century (5 feet 10.7 inches) than in the middle of the 18th century (5 feet 5.2 inches). . .

Despite this accelerated physical development over the past 150 years, one factor that the researchers did not anticipate is threatening to derail the progress:

One thing Mr. Fogel did not expect when he first started his research was that  “overnutrition” would become the primary health problem in the United States and other Western nations. Obesity, which increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, hypertension and some cancers, threatens to upset the links in the upward march of size, health and longevity that he and his colleagues have spent years documenting.

And as this recent post notes, that “overnutrition problem” is not going to be an easy one to solve.

The end of the notebook?

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The iPad began the notebook computer’s demise. The Android tablet looks as if it might finish it.

The perspective of Ric Elias

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Ric Elias was a passenger on US Airways Flight 1549, which Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger crash landed in the middle of the Hudson River a couple of years ago. But before Sullenberger landed that Airbus A320 and the flight crew successfully evacuated everyone, Elias and the other passengers confronted the very real prospect that they were going to die. In this inspirational five minute video, Elias explains how that experience changed him. Watching it is a good way to start the week. Enjoy.