Took a little time today to take a look at the great site, Fan Graphs. I found some interesting nuggets I felt compelled to share.
Clutch : A measurement of how much better or worse a player does in high leverage situations than he would have done in a context neutral environment.
How it’s calculated: WPA / pLI – WPA/LI
Why you should care: Unlike tradition clutch statistics (close & late), Clutch is a much more comprehensive statistic taking into account all situations that may or may not have been high leverage. Additionally, instead of comparing a player to the rest of the field, it compares a player to himself. A player who hits .300 in high leverage situations when he’s an overall .300 hitter is not considered Clutch.
Links and Resources:
A lot can be made about this stat and the topic of clutch hitting or pitcher. Regardless of what you think about if it exists or not, this is somewhat interesting. The idea that you can measure how much better guys do it high leverage or game changing situations as opposed to how they normally perform in regular situations is an interesting concept. That being said, here is what I found.
Of the 14 hitters with at least 100 plate appearances, only five are in the positives in this stat. Oddly enough, take a look at those:
Mystery Player – 1.64
Koyie Hill – 0.22
Derrek Lee – 0.05
Aramis Ramirez – 0.05
Milton Bradley – 0.03
Who is this mystery player who is head and shoulders above the rest? None other than….wait for it….Alfonso Soriano. I didn’t believe it either, but if you look at his numbers in high, medium and low leverage situations, it’s clear he’s a more productive hitter in high leverage situations:
Did You Know?
- AAron Miles sees the highest % of fastballs (65.2%) and still can’t seem to produce. On the other end of the spectrum, Jake Fox has seen the least % of fastballs (42.4%) and has still be able to be a good hitter. Oddly enough, when Foxy has seen fastballs, the ones he sees average out of the highest average velocity (91.5 mph) of anyone with at least 100 plate appearances on the team.
- Koyie Hill has a 33.1% strikeout %. Highest on the team.
- Going back to the “clutch” stat, Angel Guzman comes in as the leader. Perhaps he is a closer in waiting.
- Angel Guzman has the highest average velocity for his fastball (94.5 mph) and his slider (90.2 mph). Jeff Pasan from Yahoo mentioned that perhaps he’d be better served to take a little something off the slider to prevent hitters from sitting fastball and being able to adjust to the small difference in velocity on the slider. If he could do that, that could make him nasty.
- The biggest difference in average velocity between a pitcher’s fastball compared to their changeup belongs to none other than Angel Guzman with an 11 mph difference. Smallest difference belongs to Sean Marshall with just a 5 mph difference.
- In terms of effectiveness for pitches, here are the pitchers on our staff with the best and worst of each pitch:
Interesting data on Soriano.
The data on Soriano is actually a good example of why I think that “clutch” ability doesn’t truly exist.
If you look at Soriano’s clutch stats from year to year, it has actually been negative every year before this year. So all of a sudden he learned how to be clutch this year?
Derrek Lee’s clutch stat has gone back and forth, negative one year, positive the following year.
I wouldn’t say that it is a clear that he is a more productive hitter in those situations. I would say that this year he has been a more productive hitter in those situations.
Here are his career tOPS+ numbers:
High: 86
Med: 109
Low: 95
So if I understand the concept, Soriano in the clutch is better than Soriano not in the clutch?
Great analysis, didn’t realize he was doing that well in some respects!