from Amazon
Friday, June 06, 2008
Does Clutch exist? Color me very impressed
David gives us the cool graphs.
OBP2 refers to OBP, with the IBB removed from consideration. As you can see by OBP2 and SLG, the Fans are demolishing my great hitters. The gap is about a 23 point wOBA advantage for the Fans in high-leverage situations. This is doubly-impressive in that the Marcel expectation for the season overall was a 20 point disadvantage for the Fans. We are now at 750 PA. 1 SD = 19 wOBA points. So, the Fans are giving us a 43 point swing in wOBA over my guys, which is a separation of 2.3 SD. Since we are talking about two samples, I suppose the correct thing is to say they are 1.6 SD apart. Not enough for us to proclaim anything, but enough for us to now be on the edge of our seats.
You will notice that the gap is almost entirely due to the extra Ks my guys are making. BABIP (which excludes Ks and HR) are even. The % of hits that are extrabase hits is 35% for both. My guys are doing a bit better on the walk side. Clearly, the Fans selected guys who make contact, and my selection, overall, was simply the best hitters.
I’m going to give a big kudos to the Fans here as they were simply way behind the eight-ball in terms of selecting guys who were overall worse hitters, but their guts were telling them to go for their clutch hitter. In one of the most ridiculous choices, choosing Jeter over ARod, the Fans are winning that one.
We already knew that the Clutch skill existed, as per The Book. What we had a hard time finding, via the numbers, is the guys who possess this skill. It’s possible that, via the fans, we’ll have a much easier time of finding these hitters. Anyway, let’s not get too excited just yet. We still have another 1500 PA for each side to go through. Lotsa game left.