S5Dewey

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 then there's the old "hidden potato trick". I think John Wockenfuss in the Tigers organization was the last one to use it. After a pitch and with a runner on 3B Wockenfuss threw a baseball-sized potato into LF in an apparent attempt to pick of the runner. When the runner saw the "ball" go into LF and down the line he broke for home...where Walkenfuss was holding the baseball ... and tagged the runner out Walkenfuss was then ejected for making a travesty of the game. Don't ask me where he got the potato.

God, I hope you're all wrong, because if you're not you just made baseball about as much fun as...well... as Bill James said on the Simpsons, as much fun as doing your taxes.

It might be that. Or it might be adrenaline & motivation, too.we don't have knowledge of what it is. Based on my own personal experience I'm going with a & m.

Probability would tell us that if a ,333 hitter has gone 0-2 hell probably get a hit in his next AB. He'll then make two outs in a row, then get a hit, then make two outs, and so on. That's probability based on statistics. So what's the probability of four or five players getting consecutive hits? When that happens there's clearly something else going on there. Something that can't be explained by statistics and/ or probability..

I think and hope you're right. Hernandez gets the award Notin mentioned as being the player whom most people think should have made the opening day roster but didn't.

Nice article...I guess.. but it has little to nothing to do with the debate at hand. I am and always have been a Bill James disciple and I believe in sabermetrics but that doesn't mean that I accept everything a sabermatrician says without proof.It also doesn't mean that I'm going to ignore the human aspect of the game and the physiological aspects of it either. If we accept that clutch doesn't exist we also have to accept the fact that a team stringing together several hits in a row - staging a rally - is the result of randomness. Everyone who's ever played knows that's just not true. A rally like that is the result of adrenaline and motivation and in fact often times flies in the face of probability. Statisticians (and sabermaticians) and accountants do what they do. They deal with numbers without consideration of the human aspect and that's fine in a world where they're dealing with finite qualities like numbers. However, their results don't hold up when the human aspect is brought into play.

Ya! How did that not make the list of choices?

Look at my avitar and username and ask yourself what my favorite play could be. :-) Yep. I love those "big arms". My favorite play is to see someone throw a strike from deep in the outfield to nail a runner coming home OR a SS throw a rocket from deep, deep in the hole to get a runner who was obviously going to get an infield hit. In fact, I saw that late in the last ST game of the season here when a SS on the Nat's made a throw like that to nail a Sox player. I don't remember their names - by that time it was all low-minors guys in the game. I'd never heard of either one of them before and probably never will again but that SS had a great arm!

Of course not. I didn't just wake up one morning and say to myself, "Wow. How come I'm suddenly playing like an old guy??" It took me years to get this way and it happened gradually, the same way I lost my hair - a little at a time.

That leaves us with but two options. Either clutch does exist or David Ortiz has has a fraud perpuated upon him by the R'S front office by bestowing an honor upon him which cannot exist.

Man, I LOVE our OF. With a combined OPS of 2.5+ plus their defensive capabilities ..could this be overall the best starting OF in baseball? Think about it - we have legitimate contenders for - left to right - ROY, GG, & MVP. And to top it off, how many teams have a 4th OF as solid as Chris Young? I predict that these guys are going to do things that don't show up in the score book and will be responsible for maybe as many as a dozen wins above WAR (replacement) players.

Why is it that when those of us who believe in clutch use anecdotal evidence to make our case it's dismissed as so much hooey, but when someone is trying to prove that clutch doesn't exist anecdotal evidence has merit to them? The fact is, the players do not try their hardest in every opportunity. Although they may be the best in the world ***at their jobs*** they're also human and sometimes "mail it in" just like most people do at their jobs. It's all about motivation. To believe otherwise is extremely naive. Do you really think that when a team is down 13-2 with two outs in the bottom of the 9th that the last hitter has the same intensity as if the score were tied? Most of us wouldn't deny the existence of adrenaline and yet that may be the biggest factor in being clutch. I wrote some pages ago about having the hair stand up on the back of the neck, a calmness settling in, and an increased ability to focus. That's the result of adrenaline kicking in. When one takes a person who is already better than 99.9...% of his peers at something and introduce adrenaline into his system he's going to perform at an elevated state. When you take a player who's better than 99.9% of his peers - that is, professional baseball players - he's suddenly going to be a lot better than his peers. That doesn't mean he's going to be successful every time - baseball isn't like that - but when adrenaline and motivation meet a player has a better chance to be successful. Statistically when a person has a better chance to be successful he WILL be successful and when a person/player is repeatedly more successful than the norm he rightfully becomes known as being clutch. Talent + motivation + adrenaline = increased success in clutch situations. Increased success in clutch situations = a deserved reputation for being clutch.

Again, we get all wrapped around the axle by defining players as being either clutch or not clutch when the truth is someplace in between. IMHO at least half of the players are clutch and the other half aren't. Those who are VERY clutch are able to perform at, say, 50% above their norm. That is, a .300 hitter would hit ~.450 in clutch situations. That would then taper down to those who perform at their norm in clutch situations and everyone between those two would be varying degrees of clutch. At the other end of the spectrum those who are not clutch (dare I call them chokers?) will hit at 50% below their norm. That same .300 hitter will hit ~.150 in clutch situations and those in between will also have varying degrees of clutch. Of course that's not statistically provable because of the relative number of opportunities in clutch situations vs. the number of opportunities in non-clutch situations would be a relatively small sample size. As I said a while back, some things aren't statistically provable. They just ARE. There will always be a debate about this because there are unresolved parameters. 1. There is no accepted definition of a clutch situation. 2. There is no accepted definition of what makes a clutch player. 3. Once a player has enough AB's for us to know "what he is" his number of PA's in clutch situations (whatever that means) will be so small as to be too small a sample size to be meaningful. As for me, I feel the same way about "clutch" as US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography. I can't define it but I know it when I see it.

:-) :-)

Hmmm... I've suspected that we elected Sasquatch as our governor.

Exactly. Thus far it's been impossible to define a clutch moment, let alone what "clutch" is. And if you can't define it then how do you recognize it when you see it?

And if I say he does, do you then use the SSS argument? We continue to chase our tails on this debate because the percentage of clutch opportunities (in any sport) as compared to non-clutch opportunities is so small that any success can be attributed to non-believers as a SSS. The young man I referred to has an average of about 12 ppg but in this game he scored 22. That in itself could be indicative of his being clutch. As I said earlier, the "problem" is that many see clutch as being an either/or situation. In their eyes either someone is clutch or they're not - and sports isn't like that. All players are more (or less) clutch than others. No one succeeds in every clutch opportunity but there are others whose success rate is higher than 1) other players, and 2) higher than their success rate in non-stress opportunities. These are the ones we refer to as "clutch".

March 11, 2017. An 18 year old kid from a small town in Maine shoots a 3-pointer at the end of the game, The gun goes off just before the ball goes through the hoop and this kid's team pulls ahead for the first time in the last 4 minutes as his team wins the State Championship in his division by one point. Is he clutch or is it random? Who am I supposed to believe, someone's statistics of my own lyin' eyes (and my own experiences)?

This post needs a 'Like" button.

I agree. I think I've seen all of his AB's in jBP this spring and I'm amazed. I'm not sold on him yet as his having a full good year but everything looks good except his swing from the right side. I saw the HR he hit right handed against Tampa Bay on Saturday on a highlight reel and although the result was great the swing wasn't any better than it has been from that side. He just ran into one. I'm hoping one HR doesn't encourage him to hit from that side more often.

There's also strong evidence from players that clutch does exist. It sounds to me like the statisticians have spent a lot of time trying to prove something but they don't know what it is they're trying to prove - or disprove - because they can't define the target. Therefore even if they prove something they won't know for sure whether they are proving (or disproving) what they want to prove or disprove. I'm willing to call this an impasse - that the existence of clutch can neither be proven nor disproven, respect one another's right to be wrong and let it go at that.

I wish I'd said that!