TedWilliams101

There was certainly some criticism and most thought it was a bit risky, but I was surprised more people didn't view it as a terrible signing. I hated the signing and couldn't believe how much money they threw at an average player who SF didn't want anything to do with given his eating disorder. Granted, I still shake my head at the fact they let the future HOF Beltre walk for no good reason what so ever. And thanks to that, we've had maybe the worst s***-stream at 3B in baseball since. I just don't get how this FO works. Maybe they are trying to be Theo and make 'smart' moves, but end up with poop on their faces because they just don't know what the f they are doing. Players who prove they are elite in Boston, they let walk because of money, then turn around and spend almost as much on more average players who end up completely failing. Head scratching and frustrating.

Sale flipped out on his front office, it had nothing to do with what anyone "thought of him" or dealing with pitching poorly. I can't stand Price taking the "victim" stance and he's just making everything worse for him by making excuses and pretending he doesn't suck. No one wants to hear that you 'won' 2 playoff games, or hear you flat up make up a "success" vs the Yankees, or how you felt fine. The fans wouldn't be on his case a much if he just sacked up and shut up. No matter what, Boston fans will be on you if you don't perform, but it won't go any further than that... unless your a total excuse making cry baby like Price.

If you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen. Price should have never accepted Boston's contract offer if he didn't think he could handle scrutiny, criticism, and meeting expectations. The media wouldn't be so bad if he didn't act like a deer in the head lights. The difference between Sale and Price is stark. One has balls and one... well... folding lawn chair... Nothing is more frustrating than a timid pitcher. I can't wait for the Sox to part ways with Price, and I'm praying that E-Rod will get traded because there is no way he will ever amount to anything, he just doesn't have the 'killer' personality. He could be the nicest person in the world, but as a pitcher, he just doesn't have it. You either need to be crazy or completely care-free.

5GS, 0.74 ERA, 37+ innings, 0.70 WHP, 52 K, and he might be 1-2 after tonight... The lineup might as well donate their game checks for Sale's starts because they aren't earning sh*t.

Panda Express!!

Pom Pom sucks. What a waste of a top pitching prospect.

I don't think 'chokers' are completely weeded out just getting to the MLB level because not all franchises are created equal. How many players have we seen go from a team, that has Zero expectations and barely plays a meaningful game (TB, SD, etc), to the Red Sox and can't handle the pressure? The only meaningful games price ever pitched were in the playoffs before coming to Boston. There were no expectations in TB, there was no giant contract to live up to, he didn't face anything like the Boston Media while in TB. That is why I'm a big proponent of keeping guys who have proven to excel on big-market teams rather than pinch pennies (Lester :: rolls eyes). As for clutch, I think it is a bit semantics. The issue isn't with saying "that was clutch", rather, trying to equate a person as being 'more clutch' and using it as a predictor. Yes, by definition, Ortiz has had more clutch his in the playoffs than almost anyone. But it isn't because he has some different ability, it's because he was just a really good hitter who had lots of opportunities and had luck on his side. You can equate it to a poker tournament. The best player in the world needs an inordinate amount of luck to win a large tournament. There's a big variance between, say, the amount of WSOP bracelets each of the top Pros have, but it isn't because of ability, it's just pure variance. You need luck, and acknowledging that isn't diminishing anyone's abilities or accomplishments. It's just the way things work. So if we agree that there is no such thing as a player 'elevating' their play in critical spots (at least on the highest professional levels in sports), then clutch shouldn't ever be used as a factor in a player's worth, ability, or projections. It's to look back and say "Man, Ortiz had a lot of clutch hits", because, by definition, he did. But that does NOT make him a more clutch hitter, in terms of ability or projections (if he were still playing). Just like the poker analogy, it simply means he got more bracelets, but it doesn't make him any more likely to win the next one over any of the other top pros. That is the point. People using clutch as a predictor is flat up wrong. Otherwise, Panda might as well be Babe Ruth.

Sale is filthy. Glad we didn't waste his great start.

The word exists. But the difference between Jason Bay and David Ortiz isn't 'clutch', it's one is simply the better player. End of story...

The stats support the fact that 'clutch' doesn't exist. Big coincidence every player whom people consider among the 'most clutch players of all time' are also hall of fame players and the absolute best of the best. Where's the Julio Lugo's? Oh yeah, that because clutch doesn't exist. Great players are great players for a reason. There's also a reason why the only players with crazy playoff #s compared to their regular season #s are tiny sample sizes, and the bigger the sample size gets, the closer to the players career norms (Papi, Jeter, Pujols, etc etc etc). There are no players that consistently perform(ed) BETTER (statistically significant) in critical spots. If 'clutch' just simply is to mean not f*cking up in critical spots, then the only difference between Jason Bay and David Ortiz is that Ortiz was a better player and had more opportunities.

Yes, but that isn't clutch. Doing your job isn't "clutch". I'm saying this notion that, some guys have an extra ability in critical spots, is false and therefore not valuable.

Anyone who is getting paid to do a job, is expected to do the job, even when there is pressure. You can fail when the pressure is on or you can do your job (not fail). Call it choking. Regardless, you wouldn't see someone say "Clutch job on the proposal Billy!". No, they'd say, "Good job!". You MET your expectations, not exceeded them. David Price hasn't even come close to MEETING his expectations come playoffs. If you simply want clutch to refer to anytime you come through in a pressure situation, then OK, it's kind of the opposite of choke. But then it just doesn't mean anything. Outside of the expected statistically anomalies and small sample size issues, there hasn't been a single MLB player who has far exceeded their normal production in the playoffs. It just doesn't exist. Clutch exists in the sense of, by definition, of coming through in in a critical spot. However, there is no evidence what so ever that there is such thing as a "clutch" player. You can describe past events, but you can't always use them to predict future events. In this case, clutch has less than zero value as a predictor (less, because used incorrectly, it can be worse than not using it). That is the heart of the argument. Clutch as a predictor or quality factor.

So everything in life is now symmetrical? Not everything work like "if +x = y, then -x must equal -y!". In fact, very few situations do. David Price doesn't make valid the idea of clutch, he's simply a weak-minded pitcher who sh*ts himself when anyone puts pressure on him. I imagine it's not just baseball, either. If he didn't sh*t his pants, he wouldn't be 'clutch', he'd just be doing his job, pitching up to his abilities. The problem is clutch doesn't mean anything and it certainly has no value as a predictor. A great player playing great in the playoffs... is just a great player... playing great... in the playoffs. No clutch necessary. As discussed before, we all call Ortiz the most clutch hitter for the Red Sox, yet his playoff statline is almost identical to his regular season. ie, he isn't better in the playoffs, he's just a great hitter. Trying to pick single moments that come up once in a blue moon for lucky players, and never for others, is simply statistically of no value due to how much variance there is. While Ortiz is a great hitter, him coming through in several 'win or go home' spots in '04 was more luck than skill, statistically speaking. That's just the way it is.

Kimbrel is trash.

I crunched his postseason numbers if you take out 2010-2015. For 8 post seasons between 1995 and 2009, his line is: 0.302, 0.409, 0.568, 0.977 in 238 PA. I also crunched his regular season stats from 94-2009 and that stat line is: 0.305, 0.390, 0.576, 0.965. Oh look at that, it's almost identical. So I even just proved my own perception wrong. Arod has not been worse in the playoffs. His sucking from being old and broken down from 2010 on shows up more heavily in his playoff statline than regular season due to the sample size (92 out of 330 PA (28%) for playoffs to 21% in the regular season). Of course looking at it logically, it makes sense that he would be BAD in the playoffs once he got old. His bat speed slows down and he gets exposed by good pitching. He still got by in the regular season being able to hit subpar pitching, but had no chance against good pitching. As for my Pablo reference, I was pointing out the issues with sample size and variance, not supporting it!

I think with Arods career post season stat line, 2010-2015 really bring his numbers down. 2010 started his decline and he got worse every year. I do think that some players can't handle pressure well and some just worry too much about what other people think. Arod feel in this category. The most obvious example is David Price. But for clutch, as in those who do perform well in pressure situations, it's not about going beyond one's ability, but about playing your best. You could call it the 'switch', like how Lebron can take it easy during parts of the regular season and then 'turn the switch' for the playoffs. It isn't that he suddenly is better, it's simply that he is actually focusing his full attention and effort. The ability is always there. David Ortiz wasn't better in the playoffs, he simply played to his abilities. Some guys can't do that. Add the sample size issue and you have some guys who appear to way overperform or underperform, but it's just normal variance. ie. Pablo. .344, .389,.935 line in 167 PA in the playoffs vs .287,.338,.790 in 4062 PA regular season. Clear as day example of sample size. Pablo is NOT a .344 hitter w/ .935 OPS. He was hot for 2 playoff runs. I'm taking the sample size of 4000 over 167. No brainer.

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.

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.

I was backwards, it's against LHP and Cole is a righty, so, makes sense.

Hanley should be playing 1B against LHP with Young as DH. It's going to be painful watching Moreland this season...

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.

Do you remember the 4 straight HRs by the Sox a while back against the Yankees? (Manny, Drew, Lowell, Vtek I believe). Combination of bad pitching, 4 hitters with power, and dumb luck. Will probably never see that again! But... it happened!

Mathematical formulas and models are simply a way to describe the natural world. People are part of the natural world. With respect to baseball, you are right that there are limitations, but if you take the core variables, you can create a fairly good predictive model. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's far better than just going by the 'eyeball' test. That's the entire point of this. As for clutch. It simply comes down to the fact that the best players perform the best in the clutch. The reason Ortiz was considered clutch was because he was a damn good hitter that had many opportunities in 'clutch' situations. If you look at his stats, there's actually no significant difference between his 'clutch' stats and his non-clutch stats. And when it comes to the playoffs, the small sample size becomes an issue. Just look at Mr October. He played in so many playoff games that he had many opportunities in 'clutch' spots, but his stat line completely evened out, as to be nearly identical to his regular season stats. The point? He's just a really good player.

Statistical models are are used to predict everything from the weather to electron scattering patterns. The examples I used were extremely basic, just for the point of explaining statistics and probability. Of course in the real world there are dozen of factors that would go into statistical models for making player/team predictions. The point is simply to show how these things work, not give a real world model.

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.