Wednesday April 13, 2005 sports. michigandaily. com sports@michigandaily. com eRTicSrgtn aiig 9 Haas leads 'M' offense to success By Jack Herman Daily Sports Writer What do you get when you combine Michigan junior Tiffany Haas's great hitting, speed and softball smarts? The quintessential leadoff hitter. "She is the best second baseman in the country, and I really believe that," Michigan coach Carol Hutchins said. "She doesn't carry that around as a burden. She just plays. She doesn't always play perfect; she makes mis- takes, but she doesn't carry things around as a burden. I think it is a really great quality for a great player." The No. 1 Michigan softball team entrusts the role of jumpstarting the offense to Haas. And there's not a better person for the job. Haas gives the Wolverines just about everything they could ask for. Her .400 batting average places her sixth in the Big Ten this season. She's belted six home runs, already eclipsing her previous career- high of five. Haas's leadoff skills have helped power the Wol- verines to a Big Ten-leading 258 runs this year - 66 more than their closest competitor, Iowa. Haas leads the league in runs with 42, and the next four members of the Michigan batting order follow right behind her, rounding off a monopoly of the top-five of the Big Ten leaderboard. "It's huge (when I get a hit to start the game)," Haas said. "It tells our team that they can hit the ball, too. We're all just as great, and it should pump them up. At least, that's the idea." But hitting's not all that Haas excels at - she's a threat on the basepath too. She stole 18 bases on 19 attempts last year, and started this season 8-for-10. Haas admit- ted that, although she would like to steal all the time, she takes a somewhat cautious approach to running. "Sometimes I can get too rambunctious or too excited, but you can't do that early on because then it gives the other team momentum," Haas said. "I'm not as risky at the beginning of the game." Even when she doesn't get on base, Haas believes she has an important duty to her team as the first hitter of the game. Drawing on her previous experience as a pitcher, she reports back to her teammates as to what Home is great, but it can't compare to A2 MIKE MULSEBUS/L)aily Junior second baseman Tiffany Haas, center, is sixth in the Big Ten with a .400 batting average this season. they should expect when they step up to bat. "I know that I don't get a whole lot of pitches to see, but I will tell my teammates what I see and if there's movement or if she's quick or slow to the plate," Haas said. "How she holds the ball can give away some pitches. Also, where she steps might be an indication of where she might pitch. We have our coaches to help, but sometimes you can see a funky windup when you are up to bat." None of this is unexpected play from Haas, who was named both NCAA Region 6 MVP and a third- team All-American last year. Haas hit .533 with six RBI during the regionals. She also smashed two game-winning home runs to help lead the Wolverines to the College World Series. . "It was at the end of the year so there was nothing that I could do if I looked back," Haas said. "I was just going to go out and do my best. I stayed hot during the entire tournament just because I knew that I had to trust myself and what I've been practicing in games." Despite her tremendous play during last year's tour- nament, Haas feels she's even better this year, and Hutchins agrees. Haas - who led the team in hitting last year - says that increased focus as well as adjustments to her bat- ting has helped her improve this season. The changes have helped Haas increase her average by .046 this season. She is also one of 25 finalist for the National Player of the Year award. "This year, she's gone to another level," Hutchins said. "She's better than ever. I think that her defense has improved. She makes plays up the middle as good as anyone I've seen, and, with her hitting, you can't ask for much more." NOTES: Michigan sophomore Lorilyn Wilson shared this week's Big Ten Pitcher of the Week award with Iowa's Lisa Birocci. Wilson finished the week with a 4-1 record and struck out 23 batters while giving up just one run in 19.1 innings of work. This is the third time this year she has won the award. JOSH HOLMAN Part Icon, Whole Man SSaturday night, Denver defeated the University of North Dakota 4-1 to win its second straight national championship in ice hockey. Since Michigan had been expelled from the NCAA Tournament three weeks ago in an excruciating 4-3 loss to Colorado College, most students here in Ann Arbor could have cared less. But not me. As a North Dakotan myself, I kept an eye on the score all night. I certainly didn't watch much of the game since I can barely call myself a hockey fan. If there isn't a "Michigan" on one of those hockey sweaters, I will almost certainly not care. But I had a lot riding on that seemingly irrelevant matchup, in terms of Michigan standards. It was a matter of pride. Pride for Michigan. It was tough to root against North Dakota, but watching it take home a national championship would have been hard to swallow for this Great Plains transplant. Some of you might ask why I have suddenly turned on my home state, but stay with me. The only thing that North Dakota has is hockey. Any conversation I have with compatriots back home almost always turns to hockey, and very rarely do I ever have the upperhand. The Fighting Sioux have been to two NCAA title games in my four years here, while Michigan made it as far as the Frozen Four twice, way back in my freshman and sophomore years. The Sioux are part of the all-power- ful WCHA, while Michigan anchors a very weak CCHA. A North Dakotan's hockey is Michigander's football, and I've never been very successful at turning the conversation. So I can't help but think, would I have had a more enjoyable athletic experience in four years at North Dakota than at Michigan? Heck, the Sioux won the Division II National Championship in football in 2001 and lost to Grand Valley State in the title game in 2003. It's no BCS, but it's as far as they can go. I've struggled with this issue con- tinuously as athletic success seemed to continually grace my home state while, loyal to Wolverines, I seemed to encounter some form of heartbreak year after year. Then I realized that I was crazy. I can't lie. Part of my college deci- sion relied on the fact that I'd be going to a big school with big athletics, and North Dakota was never part of the equation. Maybe Michigan hasn't made it to the top of its hill in recent years, but at least our hill is roughly 14 times taller than North Dakota's. In fact, I've lived in eastern North Dakota for 18 years, and I can tell you that there aren't any hills to be king of. My drum major, Matt Cavanaugh, gave a rousing speech two years ago. (That's right, I've been in the Michigan Marching Band for the past four years. Deal with it.) A wise man in his own right, Cavanaugh offered the theory that Michigan fans have raised their expecta- tions sky high in the past decade, prob- ably in response to the amazing 1998 year when both the football and hockey teams won the national championship and the men's basketball team won the inaugural Big Ten Tournament. But not every year is going to be 1998. The man has got a point. Instead of sitting back and enjoying the athletic Mecca that surrounds us on this cam- pus, too many fans carry a sense of entitlement, like Michigan owes them a national championship or two every year. While the true enthusiasm of a Michigan fan is a different subject altogether, I have to admit that I fell into that great expectations trap, at least a little bit. I mean, honestly, North Dakota versus Michigan? Was I high or something? When the Fighting Sioux won their 2001 National Championship in foot- ball, they did it in Florence, Ala. I'm not even sure where that is. It evokes a reaction that most people give me when I tell them I am from Fargo. "Does that place even exist?" The past two years, I've stood mid- field at the Rose Bowl while stealth bombers flew over my head at the end of the national anthem. I realize it wasn't a national title game, but I'll take Pasadena, thank you very much. I once waited outside Bill Martin's office for an interview while he finished a phone conversation with former Presi- dent Gerald Ford. Ralph Engelstad, the alum who North Dakota named its state of the art hockey arena after, is best remembered outside of the state as a Nazi sympathizer. Point Michigan. And even after the basketball team made a less-than-stylish exit from the Big Ten Tournament in Chicago this year, I held the rest of my basketball writers hostage for an extra day to get some mileage out of a press pass and a free hotel room at the Sheraton that I will never have again. I had the oppor- tunity to watch some Big Ten basket- ball, and I loved every minute of it. There is no kind of basketball envi- ronment in North Dakota. The situation and weather is so bleak that one of the questions basketball coaches usually have to field in the recruiting process goes something like "Isn't it cold there?" The North Central Conference just doesn't have the same draw. Indeed, I was crazy. No matter what my hockey-crazed fans back home tell me, I will leave this campus in a mere month with some of the richest experi- ences they can only dream about. And I hope you do, too. I won't hang my head wallowing over what Michigan athlet- ics couldn't accomplish. I'm already warm and fuzzy enough from what they have given me. Josh Holman wants to apologize to the basketball writers (his favorite) for his hostage situation in Chicago and sends a shout out to the MMB. He can be reached at holmanj@umich.edu. Stats whiz uses numbers to help 'M' Nine By Pete Sneider Daily Sports Writer A new generation of baseball gurus is out to render those tobacco-chewing scouts all but useless. Sabermetrics, developed in the 1970s, relies on objective statistical evi- dence as opposed to the human eye for player evaluation and team assessment. Today, more and more general mangers in Major League Baseball are using the stat sheet as their No. 1 source. Sports management student Shawn Hoffman, a Sabermetrics buff, has developed an entire database devoted to these statistics, and in January Hoff- man contacted Michigan baseball coach Rich Maloney to offer his services. "I had put together a whole database on everything that had to do with the Big Ten last year," Hoffman said. "I basically tried to look for angles that he wouldn't already know." Hoffman went to Maloney thinking he would get the proverbial "thanks, but no thanks" response, but the coach's. reaction was quite the contrary. "I expected him to be a coach who was set in his own ways," Hoffman said. "The fact that he was receptive to it is a complete credit to him." Hoffman now sends Maloney an e- mail every week that uses Sabermetrics to monitor various aspects of the team. The basic premise of Sabermetrics system seems simple - more runs cre- ate more wins. But how runs are created is the tricky part. Sabermetric formulas such as on- base plus slugging percentage (OPS) and walks plus hits per innings pitched (WHIP) are frequently found on stat sheets today. But Sabermetrics offers other, far more complicated equations. "When you see how much stuff goes into these stats, your head spins," Hoffman said. For example, Equivalent Average (EqA) aims to express the production of a hitter in a context independent of out- sures each collegiate baseball park's susceptibility to scoring. If a stadium received a score of 100 - approxi- mately the score of Ray Fisher Stadium - then it's neutral. Illinois, Michigan's opponent next weekend, plays in the Big Ten's best hitting venue - a "Park Factor" of 126. Such information is valuable to Maloney, who might want to reconsid- er his "small ball" approach to manu- facture runs. "The other area that we looked at was scoring more runs," Maloney said. "So we looked at the number of sacrifice bunts. If we do use a sacrifice bunt, you only get one run, if that. But you really want the big inning." Hoffman looked at the 2004 season and calculated the run production in an inning that a bunt was executed. Of the 40 innings that Michigan bunted in, only once did it end up producing more than three runs. That's critical for a team that was 23-11 in games in which three or more runs were scored in a single inning. "One thing that has changed is that earlier in the game, I might have bunt- ed," Maloney said. "But I don't do that anymore until later in the game because I really want to get the big inning." One thing that can't be viewed in Hoffman's database is the luck factor. "People think that the good teams are those who win close games," Hoffman said. "That's wrong. It's the teams that win blowouts. Close games are just a matter of luck." Maloney is all too familiar with that notion - the Wolverines lost three games to Iowa this weekend by a com- bined margin of four runs. "You can't account for luck, which ended up being against us this weekend against Iowa," Maloney said. "When you get 10 straight hits, there's a margin of luck." MIKE HULSEBUS/Daily Michigan coach Rich Maloney receives a weeldy email from Shawn Hoffman about the team. WE OWE YOU AN APOLOGY FOR YESTERDAY'S GRAY BOX:H ERE IT IS. YESTERDAY, WE REPORTED THAT MITCH ALBOM WAS AT THE DAILY. WHEN WE TALKED TO HIM ON SUNDAY THESE WERE HIS PLANS. OUR BAD. DAILY SPORTS side effects, such as league or ballpark. The equation makes the quadratic for- mula look like third grade arithmetic: (H + TB + 1.5 (BB + HBP) + SB + SH + SF)/(AB + BB + HBP + SH + SF + CS + SB/3). "It's pretty amazing," Hoffman said. "You can put one player in one park and then put him in another park, do the adjustments, and his stats are pretty much the same." The stadium factor is one that intrigued Maloney. "One of the things (Shawn) got me thinking about is the park we play in, since it's not a home run park," Malo- ney said. "But Shawn analyzed our park and thought it was more neutral than defensive. I don't entirely agree with that statistic because I believe this is one of the greatest pitching parks in America because the wind is usually blowing in." The stadium feature on Hoffman's database contains an equation that mea- I Have unwanted stuff? Movin Out?