Stan Hochman: Statistics guru Seidman tells why Burrell should be an All-Star
ERIC SEIDMAN says Pat Burrell belonged on the All-Star team right from the get-go. Automatic, no-doubt-about-it, mortal lock.
Never mind the 23 homers and the 57 RBI and hitting .327 in "late-close situations," Burrell belonged because he ranked second in WPA. That's "Win Probability Added" and measures the added probability of a player to his team's chances of winning a game.
The only player in baseball with a bigger number is Lance Berkman. WPA/LI removes the built-in bias of crucial situations. "Burrell has a WPA/LI of 3.24." Seidman says. "Matt Holliday is a distant second at 2.82."
Seidman has written a book called "Bridging the Statistical Gap" that will be available on Amazon.com next week. He is a Philly kid, 22. I have a fistful of ties older than that. He is one of those sabermetrics guys, analyzing baseball's bountiful statistics.
I am old school (Neanderthal, class of '59) and ordinarily I would like to yank all the decimal points out of Seidman's book, stuff them in his pillowcase and send him to bed without his Ovaltine. But the kid has a category called "cheap wins" and another called "tough losses." He sneers at "meaningless home runs," so he's not all dust-dry equations.
"I'm a fan," he yipped. "When I'm at a game and Ryan Howard is up, I'm not sitting there saying he's got a [35.4] percent strikeout ratio. I'm sitting there saying, 'C'mon, Ryan get a hit!'
"When I get home, then, I work out the numbers." Ah ha, who better than Seidman to stop the fans from obsessing over Howard's .234 batting average?
Turns out he scoffs at batting averages because all hits - singles, doubles, triples and homers - count the same. In the first chapter of his book he offers SLG (slugging percentage), ISO (isolated power) and OPS (on-base plus slugging) as more meaningful alternatives.
"Last year," Seidman points out, "Howard's strikeout ratio was 37.8 and this year it's 36. However, he walked 18.8 percent of the time last year and is doing so only 11.7 percent this year.
"One stat to look at is BABIP, which stands for 'Batting Average on Balls In Play.' This excludes walks, strikeouts, home runs and sacrifice flies. Howard's BABIP from 2005-07 were .358, .363 and .336. A couple of weeks ago he was at .258 and currently he's up to [.275]. If he starts walking more, he'll see better pitches, which means better pitches to hit, which will result in a higher batting average."
The book has a bubbly foreword by good friend Jayson Stark, who has never met a baseball number he didn't cherish. There's a chapter on Michael Jordan's lone season in Birmingham, Ala. There's a wonderful segment about the 2001 Cy Young Award selection of Roger Clemens (20-3) over Mike Mussina (17-11).
Abracadabra and Seidman "adjusts" Clemens' record to 14-9 and Mussina's to 21-7. "Based on peripherals that include innings pitched, walks, strikeouts, skill level and frequency of well-pitched games, there really is no question that Mussina had a much better season," he writes.
That should go over like a 14-inning game on getaway night with the baseball scribes. "I'm not trying to anger anyone," he explains. "I just want people to take a different look at the numbers and not be intimidated by them."
Well, I have some numbers for Seidman. The divorce rate in America is 50.4 percent. Which means that slightly more than half the marriages fall apart. For TASY addicts, men in the 26-to-36 age group addicted to fantasy baseball, the numbers are considerably higher.
I have tabbed this category TASY because those guys take the fan out of the equation, rooting for individual guys, even when they're playing against the hometown team. A Grade I TASY who spends more than 3 hours a day on his computer has a 52.5 percent chance of seeing his marriage shatter.
"He started grumbling about my performance with a man in scoring position," one distraught housewife in Davenport, Iowa, moaned. "Men left on base, inherited runners, the whole gibberish gave me migraines. I want custody of the kids, the car and the remote. He can keep the computer."
The divorce numbers are higher than the national norm in places like Philadelphia (51.6), Chicago (53.5), Cleveland (53.1). For some reason, they have decreased in Boston. Maybe it has something to do with the unemployment rate, weather, museums? Who knows? I made the whole thing up, the numbers, the TASY survey, the distraught housewife in Iowa.
This will not please Seidman, a devoted numbers guy. I apologize. Never mock a guy with a calling. "It started in third grade," Seidman says. "The teacher would put fractions on the blackboard and I'd be sitting there thinking, 5-for-17, that's a .294 batting average." *
Send e-mail to stanrhoch@comcast.net
