Clutch Matrix Heat Map
All the clutch stats in one shot
Over the last week or so I’ve been doling out clutch stats for batters piece by piece.
Even for me, it was difficult to keep up with who was good in what situation and who was bad at what.
I had the idea to put them all in one chart and to conditionally format it much like Baseball Savant does, so the good and bad stand out.
The result is below.
Before we delve into the winners and losers, some details.
2 OUT RISP and Late/Close are simply the batting averages in those situations.
Clutch compares the batter’s performance against their performance in an average situation. 0 is average, i.e. there’s no difference between what you do on average and what you do in clutch situations. More details here.
Average Home Run LI looks at the leverage index for every home run and divides the sum of those by the total number of home runs. The goal is to see who hits home runs when it matters and who hits them in blowouts.
Combined you have which batters knock in runs with two outs, who hits when the game is close/late, who steps up in the clutch and who hits homers when it matters.
Some of these categories can overlap. A two-out and runners-in-scoring position situation could also be late/close, clutch and could even involve a home run that would affect the average home run LI for a player.
The best are fairly obvious - Altuve, Alvarez, Tucker, and to a slightly lesser extent, Bregman and McCormick.
On the flip side, the worst is Yainer, with Pena and Meyers also lagging in most categories.
I’m not sure what to make of Yainer. His standard and statcast numbers and visuals are very good, especially for a catcher and that goes for expected numbers also, except BB%.
While he hit only .186 with 2 outs and RISP, Diaz hit .254 overall with 2 outs, again hinting at success when there’s less pressure.
In fact, when Diaz batted with 2 outs and runners NOT in scoring position he hit .291.
These numbers aren’t predictive and Diaz could easily flip these numbers in 2024, but it’s something to keep an eye on in the coming season.
Thanks for reading!