Clutch

[Hoiles]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I take the guy who hits that pitcher better.

I’m not really gonna day anything about that other than it would just be easier and less work to take the guy with the reputation and leave it at that.

[Syd Thrift]

But what if their reputation was the saaaaaaaaaaaaaaame????????

[Hoiles]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

But what if their reputation was the saaaaaaaaaaaaaaame????????

But what if one of them was Syd Thrift and their reputation was better than everyone else in the world?

[Syd Thrift]

Obviously I'd start Syd Thrift then, but then all other things aren't equal because I can look inside the editor and see that Syd Thrift is 250 in all attributes except the bad ones.

[zappa1]

Originally Posted by CBL-Commish

Do you think the people reviewing StratOmatic know about the research into clutch performance? And more importantly, do you think they based their reviews mostly on that small aspect of the game?

Hmmmm. I thought I said I couldn't care less. So why would I even think about people reviewing StratOmatic? All I'm saying is Strat believes in clutch and they got good reviews. I couldn't care what they base their views on. Christ. The whole thread had become stupid. But that's just normal.

[Number5]

Just because something does get good reviews doesn't mean it's quality. If a baseball simulation gave black and hispanic ballplayers lower stats by default and got raving reviews by the trump side of the political spectrum, or even by neutral onlookers who just didn't notice this dispartity, doesn't mean it's less of bull**** in any way.


Until the Clutchists provide evidence what clutch is in a baseball setting, when it does apply and how you get to recognize a clutch ballplayer, clutch has no place in a simulation.


That said, there is an argument to be made for "player quirks" which could be something like streaky hitter, performs well in "x" conditions (which could include postseason, or the first half of the season, or so on), and so on if those can be backed by stats to a point that random deviation is sufficiently unlikely.
This will get some of the Clutchists what they want, but has base in fact, not myth.

[CBL-Commish]

Originally Posted by Hoiles

Yeah, but if you had two players of around the same OPS but one was deemed clutch and one wasn't who do you choose? Does clutch still not exist?

The effect would still be small enough that it would be hard to discern. You might not even be sure which of your hypothetical players was clutch.

Cal Ripken had years where he was better in high leverage situations. And years where he was worse. Overall for his career he was about the same in high and low. In '84 he was clutch, in '86 he hit way better in low-leverage situations. He looked clutch from '91-94, but not '95 and '97. Are you really going to make decisions on that basis? No, you're just going to let Cal hit.

For his career Rich Amaral hit 50 points better in low-leverage situations. But in '96 he was 50 point better in high leverage. What do you do with that? Basically nothing.

[NoOne]

Originally Posted by ablobj

Remember though, this is baseball. Sabermetrics, analytics, rational thought, etc, will never take anecdotal evidence and superstition out of the game. Guys will continue to hop over the basepath chalkline on their way back to the dugout until the end of time...

i can't tell if you are proud of this sort of obstinant behaviour or indifferent about it... it's dangerous and backward behaviour not neccessarily relative to baseball, but it is a microcosm of other larger behavioural patterns.

lol

people don't give up long held beliefs in the face of facts and overwhelming evidence... that would require some sort of acceptance that they were terribly wrong about soemthing in a very embarassing way, and people just don't like that much, so they avoid it at all costs.

[ablobj]

Originally Posted by NoOne

i can't tell if you are proud of this sort of obstinant behaviour or indifferent about it... it's dangerous and backward behaviour not neccessarily relative to baseball, but it is a microcosm of other larger behavioural patterns.

lol

people don't give up long held beliefs in the face of facts and overwhelming evidence... that would require some sort of acceptance that they were terribly wrong about soemthing in a very embarassing way, and people just don't like that much, so they avoid it at all costs.

Indifferent, and somewhat amused I guess.I wasn't thinking about it on any real deep, meaningful level. Ballplayers are a superstitious lot and always will be. Managers and coaches are SUPPOSED to be smarter, but we know that's not always the case...sometimes they base their decisions on "gut feeling" rather than data or logic...sometimes it works, usually it doesn't.

[Number5]

That said, "gut feeling" is not always nonsense. Some things are difficult or impossible to express in statistics, but are still part of a decision process human managers have to deal with.


This needs to be backed with statistics though. If a real life manager decides to break up the usual L/R platoon and stick with the lefty against the lefty because to him the lefty seems to be seeing the ball well and the righty seems a bit sluggish in BP, that is information that is real, though not reflected in statistics, and should correlate with better and worse performance by our platoon. However, if the lefty is OPSing 600 and the righty 800 against lefties, that "gut feeling" is not warranting a move by far.


However, if that same gut feeling is being used to justify a OOTP decision, it's likely nonsense cause absent of a DtD-injury, you have no not stat based factors to go off in OOTP.

[ablobj]

Originally Posted by Number5

That said, "gut feeling" is not always nonsense. Some things are difficult or impossible to express in statistics, but are still part of a decision process human managers have to deal with.


This needs to be backed with statistics though. If a real life manager decides to break up the usual L/R platoon and stick with the lefty against the lefty because to him the lefty seems to be seeing the ball well and the righty seems a bit sluggish in BP, that is information that is real, though not reflected in statistics, and should correlate with better and worse performance by our platoon. However, if the lefty is OPSing 600 and the righty 800 against lefties, that "gut feeling" is not warranting a move by far.


However, if that same gut feeling is being used to justify a OOTP decision, it's likely nonsense cause absent of a DtD-injury, you have no not stat based factors to go off in OOTP.

Very true. As OOTP managers, our players are basically statistical robots. Names attached to a set of ratings which the game engine uses to determine the results of each encounter. None of them are eating chicken everyday as a pre-game meal, taking exactly 12 warm-up swings in the on-deck circle, or worrying about whether they remembered to wear their lucky socks...or maybe they are and we just don't know it???

[Number5]

Originally Posted by ablobj

Very true. As OOTP managers, our players are basically statistical robots. Names attached to a set of ratings which the game engine uses to determine the results of each encounter. None of them are eating chicken everyday as a pre-game meal, taking exactly 12 warm-up swings in the on-deck circle, or worrying about whether they remembered to wear their lucky socks...or maybe they are and we just don't know it???

Schrödinger's ballplayer. You only know what happenes in the (batters's) box after you have observed him in the box.

[ablobj]

Nate Schrodinger? Isn't that the guy who managed the Angels for a year or two back in the mid 70s?

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Number5

Schrödinger's ballplayer. You only know what happenes in the (batters's) box after you have observed him in the box.

In OOTP, all batters exist in a state of simultaneous clutchness and non-clutchness.

[sprague]

I can speak from experience that there is a clutch- or pressure attribute to players. Back in university for example my hockey team were a championship team for 3 of 4 seasons. Most players were about the same regular season to final four. However, one player for example, real good defensemen just became useless in a pressure game. couldn't handle the puck, give aways, it got the point where you just could not play him, but if it was in January he was the best player on the ice. Another was also a good player in the reg season...but in those key playoff games he became a horse, literally carried guys to the net to get a 2-2 goal...he was always there when the chips were down.
So just because there is no "stat" to measure it does not mean it is not true. Some guys constantly fold under pressure (I think of pete peeters) other like Reggie Jackson tend to show up and take over. Its there but hard to put a number on it

[RchW]

Originally Posted by Number5

Schrödinger's ballplayer. You only know what happenes in the (batters's) box after you have observed him in the box.

Heisenberg is not sure about that.

[Number5]

Originally Posted by RchW

Heisenberg is not sure about that.

Was he that guy from Moneyball?

[treymancini]

Originally Posted by RchW

Heisenberg is not sure about that.

Can you determine the ball's momentum and position simultaneously?

[NoOne]

Originally Posted by treymancini

Can you determine the ball's momentum and position simultaneously?

the more accurately you know an exact position, the less youknow about where it is going... the two are not the same thing.

shrodinger's cat can apply as long as you change the %'s to teh context... before it occurs... once it is observed it's no longer what-if which is all shrodinger's cat is about.


if something is 50/50, then both are true in equal amounts. the cat is both dead and alive based on the behaviour of some variable that is 50/50 to occur and cause an action when true (or false, but not both) to kill the cat etc...

unlike does a tree in the woods make a noise if no one is there to hear it... of course it does, dummy, unless that forest exists in a vacuum...

and, yes gut feelings are some portion nonsense. just because a random guess is right occasionally doesn't make it true. this is why in drug tests you have a control group that is given a placebo treatment, because at least some portion of people will have a psychosomatic response just through the power of suggestion when you have to rely on self-reporting of how someone feels as opposed to some quantitative measurement.

a gut feeling isn't a random guess though... you are actually doing the same things the analytics are doing but with a lower resolution due to limitation of any and all human brains. you are judging probabilty and likelihood of outcomes and trying to pick the best path to success.... no different than using sabermetrics or traditional stats.

until these stats get refined better, they are some portion nonsense too... any breakeven point calculated at the moment is very precise, but not neccessarily accurate. so much can go wrong from data collection to application... even original ideas of how to crunch the numbers will be severely flawed.

if done right, it is way better than what a human brain can do at this point in nearly every way... the only arguments that exists are about things that don't fall under "doing it right"... usually invovles top-down thinking instead of allowing facts of the context to dictate how you do it.

sprague: wouldn't you say that any month you could say the same things about different sets of people? no one is consistent, that's the point of a large enough sample size.. for the same reason the numbers are mostly useless from a 1-month stretch, same reason the eye-test over 1-month is useless.. even less useful because you don't remember as much as the written record does, but you can remember things that don't show up in the record -- like a divorce or maybe you saw the player not workout or be lazy etc etc...

things that aren't measured, at the moment but could be. all of this can get more sophisticated... it is inevitable. it doens't mean it guarntees success, it just means as we get more sophisticated we will bet on teh best odds more often than not.

some people can't handle pressure. simple as that... a qualatative assessment that might or might not be clear after a couple playoffs...

e.g. barry bonds perceived as choking in the playoffs is a clear victim of small samples and what people will believe even without any real evidence to prove it other than a hunch. it's more about what they felt beforehand and think in a top-down way to justify that. in the absence of evidence, that's the only way to come to a solid conclusion. it's possible barry choked, but there is no evidence to support that with confidence... that's different than saying 1 thing or another... because you can't know...

if you can't know, both must be true (in proporiton to reality). coming back to shrodinger's cat.

[majesty95]

Originally Posted by CBL-Commish

You're going to struggle to gain traction with your case when it hinges on your word against objective evidence. Evidence almost always wins. And data almost always trumps "obviously I'm right, everyone knows that (except all the people who have rigorously studied the subject)."

Now, there is legitimate data (ex Keith Hernandez, Mariano Rivera, etc) that suggests it does exist but it’s discarded bc of sample size. I understand sample size and that with 1,000 more games it “might” not play out the same. But most players don’t even get 1,000 career games so you have to go with what you have. Just because there isn’t a bigger sample size doesn’t mean it definitely doesn’t exist. It just means there is enough data to prove it. It just boggles my mind that people so seemingly smart can’t make that correlation. It comes off as I don’t want it to be true so I’m going to find this data that says it doesn’t and argue sample size for anything that may suggest it does.

FWIW, I’m not saying it 100% has to be in the game in a specific way. But we all seem to agree that clutch exists in basketball and football but some his think baseball is immune from it? Lol. It is 100% a mental component that some have and others don’t. And it’s not just not regressing in high leverage situations. Rivera was insane in the playoffs as has been Bumgarner. Again, I’m fine if you say there not enough data to be conclusive. But to rationalize that those numbers, which blow away their career regular season numbers, are just statistical variance is lunacy. Madison Bumgarner just happens to pitch five of his 7-8 best Gabe of his career in the World Series? Tell me the odds on that being statistical variance and let’s compare that to the likelihood of some kind of clutch existing.