Another study of the "clutch" rating

[attackemu]

Hey, everybody. I decided to put together a little study of the "clutch" rating in OOTP5, mostly prompted by my reading the article in the latest SI about the subject.

Moyer had a study posted about OOTP4 that reported that suffering in the clutch is more important than performing well in the clutch, but that it basically doesn't make a difference either way.

Here's what I did:

I created two teams, with identical rosters. The only differences were the clutch ratings for each individual player. Team "Clutch" had all GREAT clutch ratings and team "Suffers" had all suffers clutch ratings.

The rosters were taken by importing several players from the year 2000. They were honestly just the first people in their positions that came to my mind.

C Ivan Rodriguez
1B Jeff Bagwell
2B Roberto Alomar
SS Mike Bordick
3B Robin Ventura
LF Barry Bonds
CF Bernie Williams
RF Moises Alou

The starting rotations were made up of Shawn Estes and the bullpens were all Ugueth Urbina.

What I looked at in particular were how good clutch vs. bad clutch rated players performed in LIPS(Late Inning Pressure Situations) as compared to their normal performance. I know its not the best stat to use, but I used batting average to determine the difference.

I ran the teams through four 100 game replay schedules, with everything(injuries, finances, trades, minor leagues) turned off.


FIRST SEASON
Team Clutch hit on average .158 points better in LIPS than in normal situations. Team Suffers hit -.197 worse. That means that in pressure situations, Team Clutch hit .355 better than Team Suffers in LIPS.

SECOND SEASON
Clutch/Suffers/Difference
.307/-.387/.694

For some reason, this second season was a lot more varied.

THIRD SEASON
This was the really weird one.

C/S/D
-.303/.027/-.330

Not only did Team Suffers do better in LIPS, they did better overall than their normal batting averages(though not by much) while Team Clutch was significantly worse than average in LIPS.

FOURTH SEASON
C/S/D
-.086/-.381/.295

Once again, Team Clutch did worse than usual during LIPS, but Team Suffers did their normal much worse so it worked out alright.


OVERALL
On average, Team Clutch hit just .076 better in LIPS than in regular situations and Team Suffers hit .174 worse than usual. This seems to support the previous study that says suffering has more of an effect than being good.

As for Win-Loss Records, they went like this

Season 1
Clutch 54-46
Suffers 46-54

S2
C 46-54
S 54-46

S3
C 48-52
S 52-48

S4
C 54-46
S 46-54

Overall, the record over four seasons was 202-198 for clutch, 198-202 for suffers. Averaged out over four seasons, its a diffence of about a game a year.

So, ultimately, my study provides further evidence to Moyer's, I think, that clutch in OOTP has a negligable effect on team performance, but for late-inning situations, you don't so much want a good clutch hitter as you don't want a bad one.

Any questions or other data you want to see(ind. players or whatever), let me know.

[Kelric]

I'd like to see the difference for pitching staffs between the Suffer and the Great. I avoid Suffers whenever possible (unless the guy is too much to pass up anyways), but don't go out of my way to get a Great. Of course, we never know if this is going to change at all in V6, and you did only run 4 seasons when anything can happen. A better test would be 50 seasons (or 100 of course), but that takes a lot of patience I imagine.

[Night2000]

Originally posted by attackemu
So, ultimately, my study provides further evidence to Moyer's, I think, that clutch in OOTP has a negligable effect on team performance, but for late-inning situations, you don't so much want a good clutch hitter as you don't want a bad one.

Any questions or other data you want to see(ind. players or whatever), let me know.

Very nice study! This helps to confirm my suspicions I've had for the longest time that the "Clutch" rating has no effect in the game. Another useless rating, that shouldn't have been put in the game if it does nothing.

[Zweiblumen]

Originally posted by Night2000
...Another useless rating, that shouldn't have been put in the game if it does nothing.

I don't know...kinda makes the game more true to life, don't you think? There have been many statistical studies that debunk the idea that there is any such thing as clutch players, yet people continue to believe in it.

Now I wonder about the 'Team Leader' ability....I rarely use the team leader or clutch ratings when making my decisions about players, and I often have good teams that fall flat on their faces in the playoffs, so perhaps they do have an effect over time....

[Gastric ReFlux]

Originally posted by Night2000
Very nice study! This helps to confirm my suspicions I've had for the longest time that the "Clutch" rating has no effect in the game. Another useless rating, that shouldn't have been put in the game if it does nothing.

Considering how many people in real life like to talk about how a guy is clutch, and how useless that is, should we remove those people from real-life?

[attackemu]

Originally posted by Kelric
I'd like to see the difference for pitching staffs between the Suffer and the Great. I avoid Suffers whenever possible (unless the guy is too much to pass up anyways), but don't go out of my way to get a Great. Of course, we never know if this is going to change at all in V6, and you did only run 4 seasons when anything can happen. A better test would be 50 seasons (or 100 of course), but that takes a lot of patience I imagine.

I don't think I mentioned it in my report, but for this study, all the Estes' and Urbina's were set to normal clutch ratings. I know that's not what you're asking, but I thought I'd mention it now.

I thought about doing pitchers as well, but there aren't any LIPS stats for pitchers in the game. Any suggestions on how to do it?

And, yes, of course I'd like to run the test a lot more times. But I found after four years that my hypothesis(that the clutch factor had little or no impact) was pretty much right on.

[Night2000]

Originally posted by Gastric ReFlux
Considering how many people in real life like to talk about how a guy is clutch, and how useless that is, should we remove those people from real-life?

Why yes, that's a Capital idea!