Clutch vs non-clutch

[cp176]

When the pressure is on. When the situation is tough, when it is do or die, humans up their game. Ever heard that a team wasn't ready for playoff ball?

 

Things get faster, things get more tight. A routine play in clutch ball game time can feel like do or death situation. Nerves are on full tilt. Emotions too.

 

The same play in the regular 162 games compared to the playoffs could feel totally different.

 

Some people can't handle it. Some can................ some can't rise to the level of the game being played in clutch situations.

 

I could be wrong, but I've seen and been on both sides of the coin on what I just wrote.

 

I think that you are right but I think most people on either side of this debate would agree with you. What I always add and I truly believe because I have seen it - there are players who in most situations do not stand out - they are not the stars- whose games seem to elevate under maximum pressure. It is not normal- they are not normal - and they are few and far between. they may not be the most predictable performers but they are the guys you want on your team when things tighten up.

[S5Dewey]

When the pressure is on. When the situation is tough, when it is do or die, humans up their game. Ever heard that a team wasn't ready for playoff ball?

 

Things get faster, things get more tight. A routine play in clutch ball game time can feel like do or death situation. Nerves are on full tilt. Emotions too.

 

The same play in the regular 162 games compared to the playoffs could feel totally different.

 

Some people can't handle it. Some can................ some can't rise to the level of the game being played in clutch situations.

 

I could be wrong, but I've seen and been on both sides of the coin on what I just wrote.

 

Nice post. And it brings us full circle on this thread. Those of us who have experienced it vs. those who say that since it can't be statistically verified then it didn't happen to us.

 

People will belive what they want and need to believe. I'm done trying to convince anyone else. I know whereof I speak because, like others who have posted here, I lived it.

 

I'll leave the rest of this discussion to those who don't believe in guts, courage, and the desire to 'dig a little deeper'.

 

End of story... for me at least.

[cp176]

I think that you are right but I think most people on either side of this debate would agree with you. What I always add and I truly believe because I have seen it - there are players who in most situations do not stand out - they are not the stars- whose games seem to elevate under maximum pressure. It is not normal- they are not normal - and they are few and far between. they may not be the most predictable performers but they are the guys you want on your team when things tighten up.

 

Just have to add - I do not think that it is a case of them playing as they always do while everyone around them gags it. What the hell though - i'm still looking for the unicorn and I think that bigfoot might actually exist. i hope that I never get too old to keep looking for them.

[SoxHop]

Nice post. And it brings us full circle on this thread. Those of us who have experienced it vs. those who say that since it can't be statistically verified then it didn't happen to us.

 

People will belive what they want and need to believe. I'm done trying to convince anyone else. I know whereof I speak because, like others who have posted here, I lived it.

 

I'll leave the rest of this discussion to those who don't believe in guts, courage, and the desire to 'dig a little deeper'.

 

End of story... for me at least.

 

The dig a little deeper thing hit me. I think when I was younger I had the mentality that I would destroy anything in front of me on the game field. Like Lawrence Taylor would say. He wasn't just happy with a tackle, he wanted to induce a snot bubble coming out of the persons nose. And I knew people who had more of that just "I'm winning at all costs" desire in them more than me.

 

Now that I'm older........I don't feel the need to grind out a point, I just want to go grab another beer.

 

Maybe we are talking about desire instead of clutch.......

 

Maybe a good study would be from what cultural and economic background boxers come from.

 

Interesting topic though for sure.

[TedWilliams101]

When the pressure is on. When the situation is tough, when it is do or die, humans up their game. Ever heard that a team wasn't ready for playoff ball?

 

Things get faster, things get more tight. A routine play in clutch ball game time can feel like do or death situation. Nerves are on full tilt. Emotions too.

 

The same play in the regular 162 games compared to the playoffs could feel totally different.

 

Some people can't handle it. Some can................ some can't rise to the level of the game being played in clutch situations.

 

I could be wrong, but I've seen and been on both sides of the coin on what I just wrote.

 

But that itself is the definition of being a great player. Bring able to handle pressure is necessary in every profession. But these players show up in all spots, not just right situations.

 

As for the playoffs, it's too small of a sample size.

 

Don't think of clutch being 'it's all chance', all it says is that the Idea that, given two players of the same talent and normal numbers, and the only difference between them in 'clutch' spots is random variance.

 

That doesn't make it less fun. If anything, it's the opposite. The beauty of baseball is in the inherent randomness. Anything can happen. There's a ton of luck involved from play to play.

[Bellhorn04]

OK, well, getting back to your example, 5 consecutive hits doesn't happen very often, and when it does happen, it's usually because of the opposing pitcher or pitchers having commend issues and leaving a lot of pitches in the middle of the plate.

 

6 hits in a row on Opening Day LOL

 

Like I say you can't predict anything in this game.

[User Name]

Nice post. And it brings us full circle on this thread. Those of us who have experienced it vs. those who say that since it can't be statistically verified then it didn't happen to us.

 

People will belive what they want and need to believe. I'm done trying to convince anyone else. I know whereof I speak because, like others who have posted here, I lived it.

 

I'll leave the rest of this discussion to those who don't believe in guts, courage, and the desire to 'dig a little deeper'.

 

End of story... for me at least.

 

And also believe in unicorns, bigfoot, and made-up hoopla.

[Kimmi]

But that itself is the definition of being a great player. Bring able to handle pressure is necessary in every profession. But these players show up in all spots, not just right situations.

 

As for the playoffs, it's too small of a sample size.

 

Don't think of clutch being 'it's all chance', all it says is that the Idea that, given two players of the same talent and normal numbers, and the only difference between them in 'clutch' spots is random variance.

 

That doesn't make it less fun. If anything, it's the opposite. The beauty of baseball is in the inherent randomness. Anything can happen. There's a ton of luck involved from play to play.

 

I couldn't have said it any better myself.

 

Nice posts in this thread.

[Slasher9]

That isn't how probability works. Past events have no bearing on future events. The odds of getting a hit are still 0.333, they don't increase or decrease due to the past. Now using someone's career BA isn't a precise probability. There are a lot of factors at play. A hitter in a bad slump would be less likely to get a hit because the odds of getting a hit aren't just a career average. But what doesn't work is the idea that a .333 career hitter is likely to go on a hot streak if they just had a big slump. Odds tend to even out in the long-run, but they don't 'make up' for what has already happened, nor do they actually end up even, and you see a bigger variance the smaller the sample size is. IE, a full season is a pretty good sample size, but even there you see a lot of variance, especially with streaky hitters. There's another point there. A hitter who always ends up with the same BA every season does so out of consistency. IE, they don't generally go on big hot/cold streaks. A player who does go on streaks, well, you see that reflected in major fluxuations in their yearly BA average, which is exactly what happens. And it happens because past events have no bearing on future events. 600 at-bats is not a big sample size for a streaky hitter, thus it doesn't even out of the course of the season, it takes much much longer.

 

 

That's not probability based on statistics. It's individual event or likely outcomes over a sample size. A 0.333 hitter always has the same 0.333 odds of getting a hit when stepping up to the plate, whether they just went 0 for 10 or 10 for 10. Looking at the likely outcome of 9 plate appearances, then you would think to expect to see 3 hits and 6 outs, but not in any predictable order. But that isn't actually true either. It's the most likely of all outcomes (3 hits, 6 outs), but odds are that you will see some slightly different distribution (2 hits, 7 outs etc etc).

 

Anyways, the odds of getting exactly 1 hit followed by 2 outs is actually lower than the odds of getting at least one hit in 3 at bats. The odds of getting a hit in any of 3 at bats is 0.333. The odds of getting exactly 2 outs and 1 hit are 0.333*0.666*0.666 = 0.148

 

 

Assuming they all have a 0.333 chance of getting a hit, it's 0.333^4 or 0.333^5 = 0.012 or 0.0041 (1.2% and 0.4%)

 

Which is what you would expect. It is EXTREMELY rare to see exactly 4 or 5 consecutive hits.

 

 

No, probability and statistics is precisely what is going on. Take coin flipping for example. The odds of landing heads or tails is always 50%. Always. Never changes. You can throw 10 heads in a row. That 11th throw is still 50% chance of heads.

Now throw a coin 10 times. The odds suggest, given a large enough sample size, you should end up with an even distribution of heads and tails. BUT, that itself is a probability.

 

There's a 0.19% of flipping 10 straight heads. Guess what, it happens. In fact, over an infinite sample size, you would expect to see EVERY possible distribution in smaller subdivisions of that set. IE, there will be 2 straight heads, 2 straight tails; 3 straight heads, 3 straight tails, etc etc. Every permutation possible is expected to happen with an infinite sample size.

 

THAT is how probability and statistics work. And it's pretty common sense. If clutch were real (from a probability standpoint), then a team would never lose, or would lose less than they are predicted to. That just doesn't happen. Now if you want to talk about how some players are better at handling pressure, that's absolutely true. But it also shows up in the statistics and it isn't clutch, it's a good player that can handle pressure.

 

Now the argument I'm sure you'd then make: "But what about players that have better #s with RISP than without?" That's easy. It's one of two things: 1. The player doesn't focus as much without men on. They don't have some extra ability in pressure situations, they just are actually paying attention. 2. Randomness. Again, it's unlikely that a player will end up with identically stats with RISP vs no-RISP. They should be close, but occasionally they will be much higher/lower. That's expected. The distribution of all of MLB stats is a bell curve in this regard. The majority have very little variance between RISP and non-RISP, ie the middle of the curve. A small percentage will be at either end of the curve, with larger deviations. It's just how it works out. Just like flipping a coin. You flip do 100 sets of 100 coin flips (10,000 total), the majority will be close to a 50/50 split heads and tails. But there will be a deviation, with at least a few sets with the split pretty far from 50/50. THAT is how statistics and probability work.

 

We got 6 hits in a row OPENING DAY. why? because: freakin' baseball gods spit on you non-believers.

[S5Dewey]

We got 6 hits in a row OPENING DAY. why? because: freakin' baseball gods spit on you non-believers.

 

Also, I was at a D1 game on Saturday (Jacksonville vs. FGCU) and J'ville strung together 5 hits in a row with a walk in there someplace as Jacksonville scored 5 runs in the 9th inning to clinch a win.

 

That's twice in one weekend. I wonder how rare it really is that a team has 5 or six hits in a row.

[SoxHop]

Wait what???????? Everyone is equally good when pressure is on....?

[Bellhorn04]

There's a line you hear a lot in legal dramas:

 

'It's not what you know, it's what you can prove.'

 

That applies to the whole clutch/non-clutch thing. You can spout off all you want, but what can you prove?

[TedWilliams101]

Also, I was at a D1 game on Saturday (Jacksonville vs. FGCU) and J'ville strung together 5 hits in a row with a walk in there someplace as Jacksonville scored 5 runs in the 9th inning to clinch a win.

 

That's twice in one weekend. I wonder how rare it really is that a team has 5 or six hits in a row.

 

Well, if we assume the odds of getting a hit a 0.300, then it's a 0.243% chance of happening at any given out. But, you have 27 opportunities each game, multiplied by the number of games played on any given day. Thus, odds are that you WILL see a team string together 5 straight hits across baseball on any given day, because there are SOO many opportunities. Let's do the math!

Odds of five straight hits: 0.3^5

Odds of NOT getting five straight hits: 1 - (0.3^5) = 0.99757

Odds of NOT getting five straight hits at any point in a game: 0.99757^27 = 0.936 (1 team)

Odds of NOT seeing five straight hits in MLB today (15 games * 2 teams): 0.936^30 = 0.14

Odds of SEEING five straight hits in a MLB game today: 1 - 0.14 = 0.86 or 86%

 

Granted, you would want to take the MLB average batting average, not 0.300, but the point remains.

EDIT: Using the MLB average BA in 2016 of 0.255, the odds of seeing five straight hits from any team today would 58%.

If you allow for walks/HBP in-between hits, then the odds rise back up closer to that 86% mark.

 

Going back to cards, the odds of getting dealt AA are 1 in 221, or 0.45%. Pretty low. But the odds of getting dealt AA increase beyond 50% after 152.8 hands. assuming you average about 40 hands an hour in live play, your are more likely than not to see AA after roughly 3.82 hours If you play an 8 hour session, that would be 320 hands and a greater than 76% chance of getting AA. So the odds are very low for any given deal, but are very good for an entire day of play.

Edited April 5, 2017 by TedWilliams101

[Bellhorn04]

With regard to the Sox getting 6 straight hits against Cole - this is how you get 6 straight hits - you do it against a pitcher who is unraveling, basically. There's a razor-thin line between success and failure at this level - if the pitcher is getting a little fatigued, losing velocity, starting to miss his spots, major league hitters will have much more success than they were having when the guy was throwing a little harder and painting...

[cp176]

There's a line you hear a lot in legal dramas:

 

'It's not what you know, it's what you can prove.'

 

That applies to the whole clutch/non-clutch thing. You can spout off all you want, but what can you prove?

 

The people that think everything in the real world doesn't exist unless it can be proven can "spout off all they want" it doesn't mean that they are right. A part of me tends to believe in some things that don't seem to exist until their non-existence can be difinitively proven. Not just bigfoot either.

[Bellhorn04]

The people that think everything in the real world doesn't exist unless it can be proven can "spout off all they want" it doesn't mean that they are right. A part of me tends to believe in some things that don't seem to exist until their non-existence can be difinitively proven. Not just bigfoot either.

 

Oh, I get it...since I was a kid I've always wanted there to be a real Loch Ness Monster.

[S5Dewey]

With regard to the Sox getting 6 straight hits against Cole - this is how you get 6 straight hits - you do it against a pitcher who is unraveling, basically. There's a razor-thin line between success and failure at this level - if the pitcher is getting a little fatigued, losing velocity, starting to miss his spots, major league hitters will have much more success than they were having when the guy was throwing a little harder and painting...

 

Hmm... I see someone has "drunk the kool-aid". Someone seems to believe that all that adrenaline that we see manifesting itself among hitters when they forcefully "high -5", do the chest bumping, and yelling at one another has no effect on their performance. In short, that adrenaline allows them to do all those things to make an outsider like like they're 'fired up' has no effect on their ability to perform.

 

Uh-huh.

 

It's all random and statistics. BTW.. how are your taxes coming?

[S5Dewey]

Ya know all those times when you've looked at your kids or your family members and been so happy with them or proud of them that you could just burst? Well, guess what. Those feelings don't exist.

[cp176]

Oh, I get it...since I was a kid I've always wanted there to be a real Loch Ness Monster.

 

I still do believe in old Nessie. Part of staying young for me has always been about dreaming and hoping - not hopelessly i hope.

Kind of along this same note, did you happen to see Bradford's blog this morning about why the Pirates would shift against Leon.

he brought up some interesting statistics having to do with shifts in general that might cause anyone to think that they are really being overused.

[Emp9]

Hmm... I see someone has "drunk the kool-aid". Someone seems to believe that all that adrenaline that we see manifesting itself among hitters when they forcefully "high -5", do the chest bumping, and yelling at one another has no effect on their performance. In short, that adrenaline allows them to do all those things to make an outsider like like they're 'fired up' has no effect on their ability to perform.

 

Uh-huh.

 

It's all random and statistics. BTW.. how are your taxes coming?

 

Good point. I guess JD Drew should've been more popular then? LOL

 

Or to another era... 25 players, 25 cabs.

[a700hitter]

There's a line you hear a lot in legal dramas:

 

'It's not what you know, it's what you can prove.'

 

That applies to the whole clutch/non-clutch thing. You can spout off all you want, but what can you prove?

Neither side can prove or disprove.

[Bellhorn04]

Neither side can prove or disprove.

 

That's right. You and I are 100% in agreement on that point.

[Bellhorn04]

Hmm... I see someone has "drunk the kool-aid". Someone seems to believe that all that adrenaline that we see manifesting itself among hitters when they forcefully "high -5", do the chest bumping, and yelling at one another has no effect on their performance. In short, that adrenaline allows them to do all those things to make an outsider like like they're 'fired up' has no effect on their ability to perform.

 

Uh-huh.

 

It's all random and statistics. BTW.. how are your taxes coming?

 

But what exactly are you trying to say - that the Sox hitters were all pumped up in the 5th inning, but were just screwing around in the other innings?

[Slasher9]

momentum + clutch / love * god = 6 hits in a row.

[S5Dewey]

Well, if we assume the odds of getting a hit a 0.300, then it's a 0.243% chance of happening at any given out. But, you have 27 opportunities each game, multiplied by the number of games played on any given day. Thus, odds are that you WILL see a team string together 5 straight hits across baseball on any given day, because there are SOO many opportunities. Let's do the math!

Odds of five straight hits: 0.3^5

Odds of NOT getting five straight hits: 1 - (0.3^5) = 0.99757

Odds of NOT getting five straight hits at any point in a game: 0.99757^27 = 0.936 (1 team)

Odds of NOT seeing five straight hits in MLB today (15 games * 2 teams): 0.936^30 = 0.14

Odds of SEEING five straight hits in a MLB game today: 1 - 0.14 = 0.86 or 86%

 

Granted, you would want to take the MLB average batting average, not 0.300, but the point remains.

EDIT: Using the MLB average BA in 2016 of 0.255, the odds of seeing five straight hits from any team today would 58%.

If you allow for walks/HBP in-between hits, then the odds rise back up closer to that 86% mark.

 

So 86% of the time (or in 86 games out of 100) a person should expect to see five consecutive hits in a game.

 

But aren't you the same poster who said this:

 

"Which is what you would expect. It is EXTREMELY rare to see exactly 4 or 5 consecutive hits."

 

...back at post #612?

[TedWilliams101]

So 86% of the time (or in 86 games out of 100) a person should expect to see five consecutive hits in a game.

 

But aren't you the same poster who said this:

 

"Which is what you would expect. It is EXTREMELY rare to see exactly 4 or 5 consecutive hits."

 

...back at post #612?

 

How can you miss the entire point, made in multiple posts. Unlikely events happen all the time when the sample size is large. The odds of getting 5 straight hits in a game IS very rare. The odds of getting 5 straight hits when you are behind and down to 3 outs is EXTREMELY rare. But take all the games, and the odds of it happening at least once in at least one of those games increases. Just follow my my math, I made it crystal clear.

 

And the 86% was NOT per game. The 86% was in at least ONE game of 15 (which means 30 teams). And that is assuming a .300 BA. Using the .255 league average of last year, the odds are 58%. That's at least 1 TEAM out of 30.

 

I'll recap.

Assuming a .300 BA, the odds of a specific team (ie, Red Sox) getting 5 straight hits at least once in a game are 1 - (1 - (0.3^5))^27 = 6.4%.

assuming a .255 BA, it's 2.9%.

 

Simple example: Over 37,000 people die in car crashes every year in the US. That is 1 every 14 minutes. Happens all the time. Yet, you clearly didn't die in a car accident and likely have spent a LOT of time in cars in your life, correct? You may never have even seen a deadly crash in person. Sample size, sample size, sample size.

Edited April 5, 2017 by TedWilliams101

[SoxHop]

momentum + clutch / love * god = 6 hits in a row.

 

We need to get you a job in the announcer booth with Remy.

[SoxHop]

Clutch is performing under pressure correct?

 

You all can't tell me that everyone handles pressure the same way. I mean, didn't you all see the movie Top Gun. That guy Iceman was pretty cool under pressure.

 

Why do some people stay in their fox hole and keep firing at the enemy, when other people run away?

 

Maybe I'm talking apples to oranges, but I really don't think so.

[Slasher9]

fwiw - this thread is clutch.

[cp176]

fwiw - this thread is clutch.

 

kept me going for months.