Quote:
Originally Posted by bababui
Thats fair enough. But what of a negative impact? There is a process called amygdila hijack that might drive an otherwise excellent player batting in non-pressure situations to perform much more poorly when under the pressure of certain intense situations.
The evidence is still incomplete as to if RBI is a worthless stat in real baseball. In OOTP I am definitly in the VORP camp.
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Clutchness has been looked at from about every direction possible. And, yes, you can study it as long as you can agree on what a high-pressure situation is. That is, afterall, what you're saying this amygdala-based idea is saying...some guys will perform better or worse than their "normal state" performance suggests. I mean...if it doesn't change their productivity stats, then what else could it change?
As I said, RBI is not totally worthless (as some Saber-guys will say to incite riots). A guy who drives in 150 runs is _almost certainly_ a pretty good player. But RBI is not a high-quality stat because it is highly dependent upon the team a guy plays for and where he hits in the order. Put Manny Ramirez in the 8 hole and watch his RBI total drop from 150 to 85. Does that mean Manny's skill level dropped 40%? No. It means the Red Sox manager screwed up. In this case, it's likely that Manny's VORP will register similar scores in year 1 and year 2--showing that Manny's a really good and valuable hitter, despite his drop in RBI "productivity."