from Amazon
Monday, May 10, 2010
Steve Trachsel, clutch god
There were a couple of threads at Primer that linked to someone who showed that Steve Trachsel performed much better in high leverage situations than low leverage situations.
Here’s some data to support that.
1. First at B-r.com, whereby Sean uses an LI of 1.5 (or so) and higher for any pitcher’s plate appearance and calls that a high-leverage situation. There are roughly 20% PA in MLB that matches this, and for Trachsel himself, that is 16%. As you expect, a starter has fewer high leverage opportunities than a reliever, but it’s not that much lower. Starters have plenty of high-leverage situations, and Sean tagged 1754 of those as high-leverage. Sean also makes life easy for us by showing tOPS+, which is the pitcher’s OPS+ in a particular split, compared to his overall average. Trachsel is at 88, which means his OPS+ is 12% lower than his overall OPS+. I can’t tell what his overall OPS+ is, but looking at his ERA+, he was probably league average. So, he gives up runs at a rate that is 12% lower than his overall average, or about 0.50 runs per 9 IP.
2. Fangraphs also has split data by Leverage Index, but David uses a threshhold of 2.0 (there’s about 10% of all PA like that… for Trachsel, it’s 6%). David only has the data starting from 2002, but he shows a similar breakdown in his FIP, with his high-Lev performance at 0.50 runs better than his usual.
3. David also tracks “Clutch” which is the difference between the sum of a pitcher’s WPA/LI and the sum of a pitcher’s WPA, divided by the average LI. So, it looks like this: sum(WPA)/aLI - sum(WPA/LI). His Clutch score is +9.9 wins, which is enormous. I would not be surprised if it’s the highest of the Retrosheet time period. Noted choker ARod is at -7.9 wins, and noted clutcher Tim Raines is at +6.0.
So, by the definition of clutch which says “performs better in high leverage situations than his usual overall”, then Steve Trachsel is a clutch god.
But, if the definition of clutch is “performs better in high leverage situations than his peers in the same situation”, then Steve Trachsel is a slightly above average pitcher in clutch situations. By this definition, it is virtually impossible for a great hitter to be considered a choker, and just as impossible for a below-average hitter to be a clutch hitter.
How you define clutch will tell you whether Steve Trachsel if a clutch god or not. Choose your definition first, and then accept the results, whatever they may be.
Recent comments
Older comments
Page 1 of 344 pages 1 2 3 > Last »Complete Archive – By Category
Complete Archive – By Date