View Single Post
Old 04-25-2019, 02:38 PM   #7
BMW
Hall Of Famer
 
BMW's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: New Jersey
Posts: 2,030
Quote:
Originally Posted by Syd Thrift View Post
I'm almost positive that there is a hidden rating (you can't even see it in the editor) that grants a *very small* bump to players in clutch situations.

If memory serves, they've found a similarly super duper small effect in real life baseball and this works for me. It's very hard to suss out from plain old probability and it favors people you probably wouldn't call "clutch" (for instance, younger players who can get around on fastballs more quickly, because in the playoffs and LIPS you're more likely to face the best pitchers, who in turn will throw harder on average than players who aren't as good), but there is *an* effect, and the initial push in the 80s and early 90s by people insisting that it flat out doesn't exist is not correct (although I think those people were coming from the right place and as noted it certainly doesn't have the massive effect that proponents of it thought it did back in the day).
Do you have links to those? I've always been interested in the subject. I mean, at a human level it would be silly to think that zero clutch ability exists.

But at the same time (SxSnts9 gives an example), just getting to the big leagues means that the system has probably self-selected against players who would constantly crumble under pressure. So it's possible the natural hurdles you go through to get to the big leagues weeds out it to such an extent to make the difference between the best player and worst player at "clutch" close to negligible.

The example you cite too (just for discussion sake) where younger players could get around on fastballs better - someone could call that "clutch", but you could just as easily (and probably more accurately) call that a talent. The person has a quicker reaction time as a younger player - there are already ways to describe that without the word "clutch" entering into the equation. Reaction time dissipates as one ages - that's just aging. It would probably be less accurate to say "Albert Pujols became less clutch as he got older" than "Albert Pujols lost reaction time as he aged, so he can't turn on a fastball like he could when he was 27".
__________________

Last edited by BMW; 04-25-2019 at 02:42 PM.
BMW is offline   Reply With Quote