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."
