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There might be a thing as clutch. There are a few players which might consistently perform great in the offseason without it being a statistical outlier, lets say Ortiz or Bumgarner.
But. 99% of cases, clutch is bull****. No one is better on a cold april night because the guy in front of him just hit a triple instead of striking out.
What the "BUT MUH STATS WITH RISP" crowd seems to forget consistently, that for literally everyone with runners in RISP the BA will be higher. If you dick a fly ball in most cases, its an out and your ba drops. If you dick a fly ball with a runner on third, it's at the very least a sac fly without harming your batting average, or it drops in for a double and you are the hero and your ba skyrockets. It's a shot to nothing.
So anyone able to consistently lift the ball with a runner at third looks like a clutch god, and even if you can't lift it consistently you still look better cause if/when you lift a ball that would normally be a batting average lowering out, it's now a ba neutral sac fly.
And then you have things like infield in or dp depth defenses that make hits more likely, in order to get other advantages. All those mean your ba will be higher than if the defense plays with only the goal of getting you personally out.
So, clutch is very spiffy at the least and might only apply to a handful of players and even then we don't know if it's skill, luck, or some assholes banging on a trashcan.
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