Clutch

[One Great Matrix]

After participating in Perfect Team I got to wondering if the game makes any attempt to account for clutch hitting/pitching? ...Whether through "high leverage" statistics or some other measure

[robc]

In prior versions it didn't and I don't think this type of thing has been added.

[jimmysthebestcop]

I hope not as "clutch" doesn't exist in reality it is completely made up by generations of baseball media/fans.

Saber guys are completely opposed to the term clutch
"sabermetric research concludes that clutch hitting is not a perceptibly repeatable skill."

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/n...itting-part-2/

and part 1
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/n...itting-part-1/

[One Great Matrix]

That's interesting. I was skeptical about it at times myself...

Skeptical, too, that it is entirely "made up".

I remember a quote from Keith Hernandez about stepping it up, now maybe he's motivated by coming through as some players this day & age are by more dollars but for his career, he hit .025 points higher in high leverage situations, & .019 points better with men on base...

Doesn't sound like much maybe but that's for his entire career...and the difference between a .276-.280 hitter & .300 hitter. (I think in 1986 he hit about .055 points better in high leverage situations.) Edit: BASEBALL REFERENCE Says: .310 on the season, .350 in high leverage situations that season. So .040 points better.

I guess I'm thinking situational...it does seem you can mostly fabricate this part of a player's game but...in a nutshell, players do have personalities & are likely to react to different situations in the course of a game.

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by One Great Matrix

maybe he's motivated by coming through as some players this day & age are by more dollars

There's not an eye roll big enough.

Keith Hernandez...hit .025 points higher in high leverage situations...

Doesn't sound like much maybe but that's for his entire career...and the difference between a .276-.280 hitter & .300 hitter. (I think in 1986 he hit about .055 points better in high leverage situations.) Edit: BASEBALL REFERENCE Says: .310 on the season, .350 in high leverage situations that season. So .040 points better.

So, what you are saying is that Hernandez underperformed in most of his plate appearances. That he could have hit .319 like he did in high-leverage situations in all of his plate appearances but instead chose to hit "just" .290. If he could have imagined that it was a high-leverage situation, he could have hit better in the other 80% of his plate appearances than he did.

I mean, what's more likely that a player can sometimes give 110%, find extra focus floating around in the ether?
Or that they can only ever give 100%. So, if they are giving "more" in some situations, it must mean they are not giving their full effort most of the time.

That's not "clutch", it's selective effort.

players do have personalities & are likely to react to different situations in the course of a game.

Of course
And it looks like Hernandez was a slacker
or
it's just random variation
or
he faced easier pitchers in high-leverage situations
or
we don't know why he performed better in that small percentage of plate appearances
or
maybe, it could be clutch. But, that's certainly not been proven. And, it doesn't seem like it could ever be proven.


*Note: Use of batting average here does not condone batting average as a valid statistic for measuring offensive performance.

[One Great Matrix]

Originally Posted by CBeisbol

There's not an eye roll big enough.


So, what you are saying is that Hernandez underperformed in most of his plate appearances. That he could have hit .319 like he did in high-leverage situations in all of his plate appearances but instead chose to hit "just" .290. If he could have imagined that it was a high-leverage situation, he could have hit better in the other 80% of his plate appearances than he did.

I mean, what's more likely that a player can sometimes give 110%, find extra focus floating around in the either?
Or that they can only ever give 100%. So, if they are giving "more" in some situations, it must mean they are not giving their full effort most of the time.

That's not "clutch", it's selective effort.



Of course
And it looks like Hernandez was a slacker
or
it's just random variation
or
he faced easier pitchers in high-leverage situations
or
we don't know why he performed better in that small percentage of plate appearances
or
maybe, it could be clutch. But, that's certainly not been proven. And, it doesn't seem like it could ever be proven.


*Note: Use of batting average here does not condone batting average as a valid statistic for measuring offensive performance.

I sort of agree and can laugh along with you on your first reaction...alright, but ...hey, we do have two different points of view. I'll admit mine's some variation of biased or off most of the time, but I rarely see anything else from people.

...the rest is a matter of total resources...Maybe he could have hit somewhere BETWEEN .280 & .310 or so if he just gave 100%...maybe instead he chose to give 100% and then 110% in clutch situations, though.

I'll admit I don't know but some lament in hindsight ...I would say Hernandez had the foresight to put together his MLB career.

[jimmysthebestcop]

Don't worry guys mathematicians and statisticians have been arguing over this for like 50 years lol ����

[ThePride87]

Clutch doesn't really exist, so I'd hope it never shows its face here. There's no statistical evidence that certain players are more 'clutch' than others.

I know that will piss-off the traditionalists here...and no, I've never played the actual game of baseball before, don't really understand what that has to do with evidence.

[ThePride87]

Originally Posted by One Great Matrix

I sort of agree and can laugh along with you on your first reaction...alright, but ...hey, we do have two different points of view. I'll admit mine's some variation of biased or off most of the time, but I rarely see anything else from people.

...the rest is a matter of total resources...Maybe he could have hit somewhere BETWEEN .280 & .310 or so if he just gave 100%...maybe instead he chose to give 100% and then 110% in clutch situations, though.

I'll admit I don't know but some lament in hindsight ...I would say Hernandez had the foresight to put together his MLB career.

The problem is people get opinions and facts confused...people can eyeroll and disagree all they want, opinions can be wrong. You show me clutch exists, and I'll listen...I don't have some random anti-clutch fetish. Would love to have another dynamic in the game. But we've never seen stats proving it's there, so I have to go with what we know. Adding a clutch factor would make OOTP slightly more EA Sports, less OOTP

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by One Great Matrix

I sort of agree and can laugh along with you on your first reaction...alright, but ...hey, we do have two different points of view. I'll admit mine's some variation of biased or off most of the time, but I rarely see anything else from people.

Sure
It's nigh impossible to totally remove one's bias. But, we should all try to be aware of it.

...the rest is a matter of total resources...Maybe he could have hit somewhere BETWEEN .280 & .310 or so if he just gave 100%...maybe instead he chose to give 100% and then 110% in clutch situations, though.

How can he give 110%?
And if he could give 110% why didn't he give 110% all the time?
And if he could give 110% all the time, wouldn't that just be 100%

I can get that a player doesn't give 100% all the time
They probably shouldn't
Run to first on a pop up. Don't all out sprint. Not if you want to have a long and healthy career.

But if a hitter isn't giving their 100%, their full focus, on low and medium leverage plate appearances, but does in high-leverage, is that what we want to call clutch? And how would we ever be able to test for it?

The point about "BETWEEN" is important.
No matter how we divide up his performance (splits) we'll find some areas he hit better or worse
He hit better in high leverage situations, sure
Maybe he hit better on Tuesdays than any other day of the week. But we wouldn't suggest he was a "Tuesday hitter".

People used to make fun of analytics by talking about how a player hit on a Tuesday after a full moon when they had orange juice for breakfast. These are the same people, often, who proclaim "clutch!" while forgetting or not knowing that weeding out this small sample noise is one of the goals of analytics.

I'll admit I don't know but some lament in hindsight ...I would say Hernandez had the foresight to put together his MLB career.

Some foresight, sure
Mostly natural talent for which he was not responsible.

[drrok]

Clutch would be performing under pressure. Some fold under the pressure, others don’t, but it definitely happens.

[ablobj]

Originally Posted by drrok

Clutch would be performing under pressure. Some fold under the pressure, others don’t, but it definitely happens.

I agree, but...Bill Mazerozki, Joe Carter, Bucky Dent, Jack Morris, Gene Larkin, Bobby Thomson, Sid F'n Bream, etc, etc...These guys all came up BIGTIME and performed well under great pressure...but it wasn't really a consistent habit which could be accurately accounted for in a stat based sim game.

edit...yeah, I know, all Bream did was score the winning run, but as a Pirates fan I had to include him

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by drrok

Clutch would be performing under pressure. Some fold under the pressure, others don’t, but it definitely happens.

In a sport like baseball, when there are pressure situations, there will always be a winner and a loser (the batter will get a hit or the pitcher will get an out, for example). But that happens in non-pressure situations too. So, we can't say that because one of the two players "won" a plate appearance that it was because they were clutch or because the other one was a choker.

And any sample of a population can be above or below the mean of the population. Be it high-leverage situations, August, stadiums with domes, whatever

So, we can't just look at those samples and make declarations.

And studies like

Originally Posted by jimmysthebestcop

"sabermetric research concludes that clutch hitting is not a perceptibly repeatable skill."

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/n...itting-part-2/

and part 1
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/n...itting-part-1/

Repeatedly show that

A viable statistical metric must be replicable, with results generally consistent over time. Our measure of clutch hitting—the excess performance of a hitter in high win-expectancy plate appearances compared to others—fails to meet this test. We therefore echo Cramer’s conclusion from 41 years ago that while clutch hitting may exist as a feature, it does not exist as a repeatable skill.

[ablobj]

Originally Posted by CBeisbol

In a sport like baseball, when there are pressure situations, there will always be a winner and a loser (the batter will get a hit or the pitcher will get an out, for example). But that happens in non-pressure situations too. So, we can't say that because one of the two players "won" a plate appearance that it was because they were clutch or because the other one was a choker.

And any sample of a population can be above or below the mean of the population. Be it high-leverage situations, August, stadiums with domes, whatever

So, we can't just look at those samples and make declarations.

And studies like


Repeatedly show that

Not to mention fielders, baserunners, manager's decisions, etc. If an outfielder robs a guy of a homerun in a "high-leverage situation" does that make him a "clutch" fielder?

[One Great Matrix]

Hernandez worked very hard on his natural talent, did have the foresight to become a baseball player, if you've watched a particular Seinfeld episode or Mets broadcasts lately, you'd agree he could have lost his way very easily if not for his ability to plan.

Perhaps he gave 90% most of the time and 100% in "clutch" situations because he knew those were the best times to be 100% & a player cannot always be 100%. I'd say he was decidedly clutch.

Thanks for the education.

[Number5]

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.

[jeffw3000]

Many people always want to say clutch does not exist based on stats. Not everything can be easily proven by stats, but that does not mean it does not happen. If clutch does not exist in baseball, then it might be the only sport it does not exist in.

I am Tennis fan. You often see tennis players raise their game when they get into high pressure situations. Certain players are pretty consistent with this. it is not about the player not playing hard all the time. They just mentally respond differently to pressure situations, and some players are far better at it than others.

You often see receivers or running backs that seem to always make the big catch or big run in high pressure situations when the game is on the line. Again, whatever the reason some players respond better to high pressure situations.

If it exists in other sports, why not baseball. It is not as easy to say why not play at that level all the time, but to say some players do not respond better to pressure would be crazy. I am a stats person myself, but one thing that also bugs me is when stats people do not admit to the limitations of stats. While stats are great there are some things that are very difficult to prove, or disprove through stats, but to not acknowledge that it might exist is ridiculous.

[CBL-Commish]

Originally Posted by jeffw3000

Many people always want to say clutch does not exist based on stats. Not everything can be easily proven by stats, but that does not mean it does not happen. If clutch does not exist in baseball, then it might be the only sport it does not exist in.

I am Tennis fan. You often see tennis players raise their game when they get into high pressure situations. Certain players are pretty consistent with this. it is not about the player not playing hard all the time. They just mentally respond differently to pressure situations, and some players are far better at it than others.

You often see receivers or running backs that seem to always make the big catch or big run in high pressure situations when the game is on the line. Again, whatever the reason some players respond better to high pressure situations.

If it exists in other sports, why not baseball. It is not as easy to say why not play at that level all the time, but to say some players do not respond better to pressure would be crazy. I am a stats person myself, but one thing that also bugs me is when stats people do not admit to the limitations of stats. While stats are great there are some things that are very difficult to prove, or disprove through stats, but to not acknowledge that it might exist is ridiculous.

Clutch clearly exists. But if you can't perform in clutch situations, if the pressure overwhelms you, you're selected out of the population of potential major leaguers sometime between Little League and the low minors.

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by jeffw3000

Many people always want to say clutch does not exist based on stats. Not everything can be easily proven by stats, but that does not mean it does not happen. If clutch does not exist in baseball, then it might be the only sport it does not exist in.

I am Tennis fan. You often see tennis players raise their game when they get into high pressure situations. Certain players are pretty consistent with this. it is not about the player not playing hard all the time. They just mentally respond differently to pressure situations, and some players are far better at it than others.

You often see receivers or running backs that seem to always make the big catch or big run in high pressure situations when the game is on the line. Again, whatever the reason some players respond better to high pressure situations.

If it exists in other sports, why not baseball. It is not as easy to say why not play at that level all the time, but to say some players do not respond better to pressure would be crazy. I am a stats person myself, but one thing that also bugs me is when stats people do not admit to the limitations of stats. While stats are great there are some things that are very difficult to prove, or disprove through stats, but to not acknowledge that it might exist is ridiculous.

You know what else exists? Confirmation bias

[glenmere14]

Not to go too far off topic here, but I've always had trouble believing that brush back pitches made any difference at all to a major league hitter. I just find it difficult to believe that someone could perform at this extreme level of competition while feeling intimidation to any degree.