Baseball Notes

If I hear one more person talk or write about how clutch-hitting ability or the perception of clutch hitting is the most debated and written about statistical anomaly in baseball, I might start going a little crazy. So much has been written and discussed on this topic over the past 20 years that it is getting somewhat ridiculous these days. There is the side that believes certain hitters, whether they are typically good or not-so-good hitters, can somehow routinely deliver in the most crucial of circumstances, and then there is the side that believes it is just about perception, and the people who are commonly referred to as “clutch hitters” are only defined as such because they have performed well a few times maybe on the biggest of stages and they stick out in our minds as having this unique ability.

But finally, two different sites are asking people to put their money where their mouths are when it comes to clutchiness (only one involves actual money, but still…).

The famous sabermetric blogger Tom Tango, aka Tangotiger, is challenging readers, clutch advocates, and the like to a simple contest to see if clutch hitting really can be predicted or continued after it is recognized. In this post on his website, Tango challenges the following:

He wants fans/readers/critics or whomever to pick one guy from “their team” who they feel is the most clutch, assuming they believe that sort of thing. The one guy they would want to have come up in the most crucial, pressure-filled situations and then nominate them for their side. Tango will then pick who he thinks is the best hitter from that same team to compare at the end of the season.

Recognizing that some teams will have one player represent both sides (i.e. the Cardinals with Albert Pujols), the thought is that if that happens he will use the next most requested clutch hitter and who he perceives to be the next best hitter on the team. And this will go on down the line until there is a difference in who the readers pick and who Tango picks. Once this is done, you will be comparing 30 “clutch” hitters to 30 good hitters and Tango is predicting that his hitters will come out on top in the clutch situations.

How will he measure it? A while back Tango invented a measurement tool for in-game situations called Leverage Index. Essentially, it takes each moment in a game, a batter’s at-bat or a pitcher’s confrontation with that hitter, and places it in the context of the game. As the game gets closer to the end, the LI goes up for the hitter or pitcher because you have less time to put your team ahead, tie the score, hold the lead, etc. At the beginning of a game when there is no score, there may be an LI of 1.0 or lower per situation. A batter coming up in the 9th with a tie score could have an LI of 10.0 or so. So games that are blowouts by the 8th or 9th inning would have low LI scores for each situation, but tied games that progress into the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th innings would have increasingly higher LI scores.

Tango proposes that we compare the plate appearances with the 50 highest LI scores for each player that is chosen for the project. So you would end up comparing 1500 plate appearances for the “clutch” side to 1500 plate appearances for the “Tango” side. At the end of the season, he will look at the aggregated lines of the two groups to see which performed better in their most crucial situations.

He believes if the players actually chosen as clutch hitters do perform better in those situations, there will be some sort of statistical significance separating the two groups. Not to spoil the surprise, but he is not expecting that separation to be there.

In a related story inspired by Tango’s challenge, blogger Phil Birnbaum has laid out his own challenge to clutch advocates in this post on his website. His project is a little more risky on his part and actually involves money changing hands. The details look like this:

Birnbaum is not proposing to compare clutch hitters to other good hitters, but rather perceived clutch hitters to proposed choke hitters - those who absolutely fail in pressure situations. He challenges readers to pick any number of clutch and choke hitters; one vs. one, 30 vs. 30, 100 vs. 100, whatever. And he has finally settled on odds for the bet - 2:3. So he is proposing to every bettor whose clutch players out-perform the choke hitters, he will pay them $10, but if your choke hitters out-perform the clutch hitters, you have to pay Birnbaum $15. The reason he does not offer 1:1 odds is because he states that if you accept those odds, you are basically saying whether or not a player is clutch or not is essentially “a coin flip”, and this bet is supposed to attract those who believe clutch hitting exists.

If you accept this bet, you can define the players, you can define the amount of money, you can define the metric used to measure the players (as long as it revolves around batting average, such as BA in close and late, or LIPS), and you can control your sample size. Hitters suggested with obviously different skill levels (someone wanted to use Ortiz vs. Kevin Millar) will be judged on clutch differentials from seasonal numbers and not overall performance in the defined situations.

What he wants to see is if there is anyone out there who believes with a there is at least a 60% probability (hence the 2:3 odds) that you can predict hitters who will perform extraordinarily in the clutch. Some have accepted and some have declined, but there has definitely been some action on this post. You can also make the bet for charity, with the loser paying the amount to the charity of the winner’s choice. Email Phil Birnbaum from his website, http://sabermetricresearch.blogspot.com/, if you want to take part.

As you know, clutch is a very tricky thing. It has been shown to have patterns across seasons but not necessarily across careers, and every new study that comes out seems to contradict or challenge the rest. And you have so many competing ways to measure it, that it all gets lost in the shuffle anyway. Perhaps, at least for 2008, these two projects will use some real-life examples to put some of the issue to rest. Until it all comes up again next year, that is….