Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
I believe one of the least consistent, and most misleading statistics in Baseball is ERA or Earned Run Average; the number of earned runs a pitcher allows per nine innings pitched. I'll ask Jeff Angus to weigh in on the baseball side of this but I believe it's misleading because it depends so much on the strength of a pitcher's bullpen, the tendencies of his manager, and the team's position in the standings.
For example, during his final years in Boston, Roger Clemens was virtually unhitable for 5-6 innings each time he pitched but gave up a lot of his runs in the 7th and 8th inning. With a stronger, more reliable bullpen, Clemens would have been out of the game after six so his ERA for those years was higher by perhaps a run or two because of the lack of a bullpen.
The Red Sox have had around a ten game lead or more over their nearest competition for more than a month. As a result, their manager, Terry Francona, doesn't have the same urgency to replace a starting pitcher when he falters as he does when the team is only a couple games ahead or behind in the pennant race.
Sparky Anderson, manager of the Cincinnati's Big Red Machine in the seventies, and later, the Detroit Tigers, was known for his quick hook. Grady Little, famous for leaving Petro Martinez in for one batter too many in the 2003 American League Championship Series, had a tendency to leave pitchers in longer than he should. I'm guessing (without statistical backup) that pitchers under Anderson had a lower ERA than pitchers under Little.
Turning to sales, there are a number of statistics that are equally difficult to equate with performance, the most obvious being revenue. Many salespeople, considered top producers by their companies, top the charts for revenue but don't perform in such a manner as to justify the attention, rewards or commissions that they earn. They may have inherited their accounts, built them up over decades, or have the best territory. For many of them, if you took those accounts away and directed them to go out and sell something, many of them would fall flat on their faces.
Some salespeople don't appear at the top of their company's charts because they are new, don't have the best territories or are starting territories from scratch, may be great performers, doing all the right things on a daily basis, but don't get the recognition they deserve.
Can you think of any other parallels?
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