JFtC Chat: Blue Jays & Clutch Performances

The staff at JFtC had an interesting discussion regarding the Blue Jays and whether a player can actually be called “clutch”

Featured Image Courtesy Of DaveMe Images. Prints Available For Purchase

The Toronto Blue Jays are in the middle of an exciting playoff push and every performance matters. The margin for error is rather slim and there will be situations where big time hits, pitches, plays could mean the difference between winning and not, playoffs and not. This brings up the notion that some players are more “clutch” than others. This mostly intangible, and perhaps fictional, quality is at the center of a recent chat among JFtC staff. Check it out:

Steve Fek: Clutch is a thing if you are a coach, scout or teammate

Jason MacDonald: Steve, agree 100%. But so difficult to define. I remember Keith Law many years ago trying to disprove with numbers. Can’t be done. To me it’s the ability to perform under pressure, to remain calm, focus, and stay in the moment. Clear distractions from your mind. Don’t let the moment overwhelm you. The numbers don’t always show it, but it is there.

Jim Scott: I think a lot of “clutch” is human bias. We see a Dave Winfield double winning the World Series and think “what a clutch player!”, forgetting that up to that point he was 0-for-4, leaving runners in scoring position in three of those PAs. We naturally remember the game-winning homers and forget (or give lesser value to) the strikeouts. But irrationality is the best part of being human!

Bob Ritchie: Further to your Dave Winfield comment and some people forgetting the 0-for-4, it reminded me of a quote from Patrick Stewart, the actor from Star Trek: The Next Generation. He was once asked if Picard and his crew ever visited planets that were not inhabited by life. Stewart replied, “Yes, but we didn’t bring the cameras to those planets.”

Jim: To me, many of these terms are definitional.  If you define clutch as “he sometimes gets hits in important situations” then I agree that numbers are largely irrelevant.  But if you define clutch as “he has hit better over his career in high-leverage situations than low-leverage ones” – a definition that is clearly testable, mathematically – then don’t be surprised if someone decides to test it, mathematically.

Steve: I have always looked at clutch as a sense of confidence in a player’s ability to come through at critical times than strictly historical. Teammates and coaches develop a sense of “I’m happy this guy is at the plate or is on the mound” When you watch a team and a player on a regular basis, you develop a comfort level with what the player COULD do to positively impact an outcome. For example, I watched Corey Dickerson play everyday for 2 years in Pittsburgh and watched games when he was in Philly and Miami. If there were runners on base in a close game, I anticipated a positive outcome. I do now that he plays in Toronto. Does not mean he WILL come through, but I am more comfortable with him driving in a run or keeping a rally alive with a walk.

As hot as Lourdes Gurriel Jr.has been or productive as Teoscar Hernandez has been, I do not instinctively have that same positivity when they are up at a critical time. If it is Bo Bichette or Vladimir Guerrero Jr. I do feel something good is going to happen. Conditioned responses. Players feel the same sense. I was hardly a star goaltender or pitcher, but I knew in my heart I was capable of making a timely save in close games or could set any hitter up. I know my coaches had same confidence and despite my small stature my teammates felt the same way. I had become conditioned to expect I would get job done.

This is the biggest difference between Guerrero in 2021 and the Vlad of 2020. He experienced early in the year the type of successes at the plate and at first base  on a regular basis. So now he, his teammates and we fans expect him to be successful in big time situations Statistics and mathematical analysis may disprove a players level of performance over a short-term or career. But the sense coaches, players and fans experience when a player is in the spotlight at critical moments almost negates the “facts”. Robbie Ray can get hammered in every appearance the rest of the year-what he has done in 2021 will still leave us with a sense of “Thank Heavens Ray is pitching this game”

Bob: I will weigh in on the is subject.

1. Clutch cannot be measured directly.
2. However, to say that numbers cannot show whether it exists or not is not valid in my opinion.
3. Why? Because people who say that clutch exists will point to on-field performance as evidence. “He got the big hit” or “look at his RISP numbers.”
4. Therefore, we can attempt to measure “clutch” indirectly with numbers be it batting average, RBIs, etc.
5. Another issue I have is that to strictly focus upon what the batter does ignores that there is a pitcher and fielders experiencing the same emotions, the same pressures in that high-leverage situation. Isn’t the opposition trying to come up big? Is it really only a matter of what the batter does? Is it not possible that the “clutchiness” of the pitcher and fielders will cancel out the batter’s “clutchiness”?
6. As Jim noted, one has to first define what clutch is.

From a Baseball Prospectus article on the subject of clutch.”The sabermetric contentions are that:

1. 1. The batters who do best in clutch situations are the batters who do best overall—that is, the best hitters are the best in all situations. Since 1988, there have been five batters with a career OPS above 1.000 in high-leverage plate appearances (defined as leverage index greater than 1.5, minimum 500 high-leverage plate appearances): Barry Bonds, Joey Votto, Mark McGwire, Manny Ramirez and Albert Pujols. They ranked first, sixth, third, second, and 12th in overall OPS during the same time frame. Good clutch hitters are hitters who are good, period.
   2. Clutch hitting is not a repeatable skill. In 2014, the year after (Allen) Craig’s big season with runners in scoring position, he hit .216/.306/.319 in the same situations. Clutch hero David Ortiz‘s batting averages in at-bats with a leverage index over 2.0 over his final six seasons were, chronologically, .229, .316, .196, .397, .208, and .273.”

Below are two tables; they are the same except that I substituted the player’s name with Player A, B, C etc. Try and guess who the players are before looking at the second table.There is a metric that may be new to some folks. It is tOPS+, which is how well you performed relative to your overall performance.Suppose a 0.729 OPS is average (OPS+ of 100). Player X has a 0.729 OPS overall (OBP – 0.321 and SLG of 0.408) and produced a 0.729 OPS in high-leverage situations. Therefore, Player X’s tOPS+ in high leverage situations would be 100. In other words, Player X performed the same in high-leverage situations as he did in all situations combined (high, medium and low). If Player X generated a 0.348 and 0.425 SLG in high-leverage situations, their 0.773 OPS would translate into a 113 tOPS+.Suppose you are Player Y and your OPS is 0.857, an OPS+ of 135. If you produced a 0.857 OPS in high-leverage situations, then your tOPS+ would be 100, the same as Player X’s.Clearly Player Y performed better than Player X in high-leverage situations (0.857 versus 0.729), but both players performed as they had in all situations. Neither outperformed nor underperformed relative to their own OPS performance levels. Yes, the data contained in the tables is a small sample size. However, it illustrates that better hitters generally perform better than inferior hitters in “clutch” situations but that is because they are better hitters, not that they are clutch. Players E and I illustrate that clutch hitting is not a repeatable skill. Each player had multiple seasons when their individual tOPS+ were well above 100; they also had tOPS+ marks that were well below 100. Note that tOPS+ is determined in respect of the same time period. For example, if Player Y had a 0.800 OPS in 1995 (all situations), which was below their career 0.857 OPS, the tOPS+ is based upon the 0.800 OPS. In other words, if a player is having a poor season in 1995, 1995’s OPS is used as the base.