If you somehow missed Robert Orr’s introduction to his SEAGER metric over the last couple of months, it’s worth catching up on. You can do that here for individual players and here with a peak at the team level. I can tell you two things about it. One is its acronym is cooler than other ones like KITT from Knight Rider (Knight Industries Two Thousand) and not as confusing as ones like MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital). The other is that it provides a sharp look at how good hitters are at choosing the best pitches to hit, based on its correlation to isolated slugging being stronger than other more readily available public stats.
From the team level, it also provides a potential peak at a club’s philosophy. If they’re not actively developing players to attack the zone in a particular way that has manifested, they’re at least selecting for players who have been good enough to get to the majors with these approaches. And if a given team has a particular philosophy, and the calendar just turned to January, what better way is there to spend your time than wondering what could be different than what we expect 10 months from now?
The Phillies, Diamondbacks, and Reds all created positive buzz and were all relevant last year, whether that meant through the end of the regular season or the postseason. They also have something else in common: ranking in the bottom third of the league in SEAGER. So who put them there, and how might similar performances shape the playoff picture in 2024?