The Clutch Gene
Who's clutch? The answer may surprise you
One reason I like numbers so much is that I believe everyone has biases, myself included.
I’m numbers-driven, but have favorite players (more on that in a minute). Ones that I tend to be more forgiving of than others.
We all do.
To put it another way, I believe we remember what we want to remember.
If you “like” a player and he does well, you tend to give him the benefit of the doubt, remembering the times he succeeded and not the times he failed.
Or vice versa.
My son remembers every time Martin Maldonado failed in a “clutch” situation, but struggles to remember when Maldonado came through.
Human nature.
Numbers help me avoid biases, or at least recognize them.
They tend to either confirm my hypothesis or show my bias and I can adjust my thinking accordingly.
We shouldn’t rely on numbers alone though. They’re just one tool.
A Maldonado clutch home run in May against the Royals, isn’t the same as Altuve hitting a three-run, two-out, 9th-inning bomb in Yankee Stadium down by 2 in September, though they may be counted similarly for “clutch” or “leverage” purposes.
Situations matter.
With that said, I found the 2023 “Clutch” numbers from fangraphs fascinating.
You can find the definition here.
“…how much better or worse a player does in high leverage situations than he would have done in a context neutral environment.” It also compares a player against himself, so a player who hits .300 in high leverage situations when he’s an overall .300 hitter is not considered clutch.
And below is the scoring.
It should also be noted that this is not a predictive stat.
Clutch does a good job of describing the past, but it does very little towards predicting the future. Simply because one player was clutch at one point does not mean they will continue to perform well in high-leverage situations (and vice versa). Very few players have the ability to be consistently clutch over the course of their careers, and choking in one season does not beget the same in the future.
As is typical, I’m drawn to the outliers at both ends of the spectrum, Chas at one end and Jeremy Pena at the other, but some of the numbers in between are fascinating, too.
Altuve slightly above average? Abreu right at average? It appears my son was right about Martin, but who would have expected THAT from Yainer?
I previously mentioned Pena’s home runs, such as they were, coming in very low leverage situations overall and this seems to add to that narrative, in general.
That and maybe Chas is a “Big Boy” after all.
Thanks for reading!