Originally Posted by nanwynnfan
So as not to leave things with loose ends hanging, I decided to revisit old notes on clutch hitting and the Tom Ruane 1960-2004 study provided in a link earlier in this thread.
That plus a re-reading of Thorn-Palmer's "The Hidden Game of Baseball," which in its own turn turned to Player Win Averages developed by the Mills Brothers, led me to the conclusion that keeping it simple would be best. So here are the guidelines I set:
1. Although my original idea of an OPS progression had appeal to me, it muddied the waters:
a. It created a multi-layered heirarchy of base performance, into .500, .600, .700, etc. up through 1.100+ OPS, which resulted in tiers of expectation and too many contributing factors.
b. It included OB% and slugging % factors, which boils down to the old song that power rules, when meaningful contact should be the focus [IMO].
c. Not to denigrate the BB, but when fans talk of clutch, they generally say "hitting" in the clutch.
2. Tom Ruane had provided a fantastic base of date [1960-2004]; and it basically revolved around AB's and Hits, which distills to Batting Average. So, I decided to follow that route as well.
3. Ruane's study had a basic average of .260 @ neutral and .240 @ Men on 2 Outs; BUT he counted Sacrifice flies as AB~Outs, when in the context of clutch, contact sufficient to allow runners to tag and advance [IMO] are NOT items to be penalized. Making that adjustment, I get @ .286 @ Neutral and @ .270 @ Men on 2 Out.
4. I had originally looked for a progression UP from player @ Neutral, None on, None Out ... this is a straw man. What we [i] want to measure here is performance in heightened pressure situation, NOT a means of punishing good hitters for better overall ability to begin with.
5. With @ 150 players from the 30 MLB teams, I started with the following data:
a. a mean performance BA @ .270 in heightened pressure situations: Men on 2 Out, 3B < 2O factored by K rate, RISP, RISP 2 Out, Bases Loaded;
b. a standard deviation, determined to be @ .05;
Listed below are, in the order of "clutchness" are players these efforts produced based on 2007 YTD: [This is NOT a put-down on some stars who do not appear: It does signify that their numbers in heightened pressure situations did NOT rise above the .270 mean].
AL, 27 Players
Suzuki
Gload
Thames
Jeter
Redmond
Figgins
M. Young
Ordonez
Ortiz
Vidro
Pedroia
Del. Young
Gathright
Butler
Lowell
Tejada
A-Rod
Crawford
Polanco
Ibanez
DeJesus
Thomas
C. Guillen
Upton
Bartlett
Sizemore
V. Martinez
NL. 17 Players
W. Harris
Utley
Garciaparra
Spilbourghs
Floyd
Hawpe
DeRosa
"C." Jones
Howard
Renteria
J. Jones
Holliday
K. Matsui
A. Ramirez
S. Green
Hudson
Rowand
As a final note, I'd argue that the expectation that "clutch" would transition flawlessly from season to season, especially as a qualification to "BE" clutch, is an unrealistic expectation:
1. we are dealing with humans, injury, personal distraction, "luck" and a limited number of opportunities. I would expect to see a thread of continuity throughout the productive years of a career, but not an unbroken string of performance.
2. This is not an argument that these 44 player are the greatest in the game today. These, from the work I've done so far, are the top performers hitting [BA] in heightened tension situations against a .270 mean.
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