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Thursday, July 15, 2010
Best and Worst Clutch Hitters of the Retrosheet era
Sean added Clutch to Play Index. And here you go. The greatest single-season clutch: David Ortiz 2005 at +3.4 wins followed by +3.3 wins of Eddie Murray 1985 and Mickey Stanley in 1968. The guys who saved all their best performances for when it didn’t count: Bill Mueller, 2003 at -3.5 wins, and Gary Gaetti 1983 at -3.3 wins. ARod’s 2002 was fourth worst at -3.2 wins. I just love when a stat verifies the obvious (Ortiz and AFraud), and gives you the expected (Eddie Murray), and so adds legitimacy when you get some surprises. Bobby Thomson’s 1953 comes in at -2.9 wins in Clutch.
And, the career leaders:
+13.4 wins Nellie Fox
+10.5 Tony Taylor
+10.0 Tony Gwynn
+9.3 Pete Rose
...
+6.1 Mark Grace (23th place)
+6.1 George Brett
...
+5.7 Ichiro (34th place)
...
+5.4 Tim Raines (39th)
This list goes toward what the fans were telling my in my Color of Clutch project: they love the guys who put the g-dd-man bat on the g-dd-mn ball.
And the guys whose stats were compiled when the game mattered the least:
-16.8 wins Sammy Sosa
-15.9 Frank Robinson <--- !!!
-13.0 Jim Thome
-12.7 Lance Parrish
-10.6 Mike Schmidt
-10.2 Richard Hidalgo
-10.0 Jermaine Dye
...
-8.9 ARod (12th place)
-8.9 Jeff Kent
-8.9 IRod
-8.6 Jim Rice (the man most feared ever)
Tell me you don't love this.
If we take Sammy Sosa, we we see that in the 20% of his PA that were in high leverage situations, he had a .264/.341/.479 line, compared to his career .273/.344/.534. Was this “luck”? Well, do we even care it was luck? It happened. His gaudy numbers did not come as often when the game mattered.
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If you do care if it was luck, his performance in high lev situations was 2 SD from the mean. Given that this is the most extreme of all the players, it is almost certainly bad luck on Sammy, since *someone* is going to be 2SD from the mean just by luck alone. Still, that the best clutchers are populated by non-HR hitters and the worst-clutchers are filled with big swingers, it’s certainly not all luck. There is *some* clutch skill. In any event, we are not celebrating talent level, but performances. And Sammy Sosa’s numbers were very inflated relative to when his team needed him, and Nellie Fox came through like no one else.
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Thanks Sean.