Even More on the Cubs
First I’d like to acknowledge Baseball Prospectus’ Rob McQuown’s comment about needing to league-adjust the Clutch wins total. Somehow, the pitcher batting aspect slipped my mind, but it is a legitimate concern. At this point, I do not have the rectified team numbers although I’ll see if I can’t come back to that sometime in the near future.
This post is a little more on the trivial/fun side than the others because it concerns the players on the Cubs during those seasons. With the assistance of Jack Moore, I gathered each of the players between 2000 and 2010 who recorded at least 300 plate appearances with the Cubs and also played significant time elsewhere during their careers. I used careers rather than just 2000 onward because I wanted a larger sample size. Unfortunately, the total came in at 36 players, which is not huge, but not bad.
As for the results, it was 50/50 in terms of improving/declining Clutch scores with the Cubs as opposed to elsewhere. The most egregious of declines skews the mean and other data. Believe it or not, Sammy Sosa. I believe Sosa falls into the trap in which most of the criticism about the Clutch stat would reside. Namely, he was too good in regular situations. So, being anything shy of Superman in Clutch spots killed him. His career OPS in more than 2,000 high leverage spots is only .820 though, opposed to a .878 OPS overall.
Everyone else is tossed around randomly. Juan Pierre and Jacque Jones are second and third. Ramon Martinez and Michael Barrett are third and fourth. Mark DeRosa and Derrek Lee are fifth and six. And so on. The guys who actually have better Clutch scores with the Cubs are more interesting. The top two are Mark Grace and Fred McGriff. Grace might not be a surprise, since he played the majority of his career with Chicago and had his best seasons there. McGriff, though? A bit odd. Rondell White and the Bartman game goat, Alex S. Gonzalez, are next up, with Alfonso Soriano rounding out the top five.
There is no correlation between the non-Cubs and Cubs’ Clutch scores, which probably isn’t too shocking, given the variance in plate appearance totals, but … well, other than Sosa skewing the numbers down a bit, I have no explanation for why the Cubs are so random. Therefore, I’m blaming the goat.
Here are the players included and their Cubs’ Clutch score for those interested:
Sosa -13.55432565
Barrett -4.952477
Lee -4.3219263
Alou -3.475261
Walker -2.3144106
Young -1.956719
Cedeno -1.914849696
Bellhorn -1.775598
Patterson -1.6012659
Martinez -0.8805071
Hundley -0.8175366
Miller -0.763782
Buford -0.735602
Mueller -0.688361
Floyd -0.53873293
Grudzielanek -0.519926
Perez -0.338518
Soriano -0.3089182
Pierre -0.205656
DeRosa -0.1909203
Jones -0.1684531
Byrd -0.163878
Karros -0.0883951
White -0.0060742
Gutierrez 0.017107
Girardi 0.0526404
Stairs 0.0655689
Johnson 0.124719
Greene 0.162944
Coomer 0.195046
Burnitz 0.431045
Matthews Jr. 0.474214
Gonzalez 0.534706
Ramirez 1.1082986
McGriff 1.539963
Grace 7.24356175
Painful. Just painful to read that list of clowns, Grace notwithstanding.
Nobody calls The Crime Dog a clown!!!
Almost as painful as reading you info free reply.
I wonder if there’s a bias against good players because they’re more likely to face elite relievers, or at least fewer opposite-handed relievers. A manager might leave a LOOGY in against Grudzielanek but not Sosa. Also, I wonder if the Cubs’ perpetual state of righty-heavy lineups influences this (This might be less applicable to the early ’00 Cubs). High LI situations are more likely to occur later in the game, when the handedness of the pitcher is more up to the opposing manager.
Just throwing some things out there.
The cubs have always been and always will be too interested in playing their overpaid non-producing players. They are also willing to let an overpaid, short-time manager manage a ball club that would have trouble winning against AAA clubs because they are so uninspired. Kick Lou out the door, Play the rookies, place the overpaid pieces of trash on waivers (Lee, Rameriz, Fukudome, Soriano, Zambrano) and if someone claims them release their rights, else option them to triple AAA and hope someone claims them. If the worst thing that happens is you lose these players without anything in return you gained a fortune in what you can sign in Free Agents next season or the season after. The risk-reward is too great not to do this. Shame those players out of their contracts if you have too.
I would say more that Sosa would have had his SLG suppressed in high leverage situations, leading to the decline. He was always a big strike out guy, so facing a closer (generally someone who strikes out a lot of people) would maximize this. Also, during his peak, many teams would rather take their chances on someone else, so he’d walk — also reducing SLG. Checking out baseball-reference:
Overall: SO%=23.3 BB%=9.4 ISO=261 BABIP=0.305
2out, RISP: SO%=22.5 BB%=14.4 ISO=264 BABIP=0.282
late&close: SO%=24.2 BB%=10.1 ISO=214 BABIP=0.291
vs RHP: SO%=23.6 BB%=8.0 ISO=261
This is over his whole career, where the percentages are of plate appearances, not ABs. The main culprit is obviously his late & close numbers, which show an elevated SO rate, only slightly elevated walk rate, and a big reduction in ISO, far beyond his performance against RHP in general. Moreover, he performed considerably worse vs. Power pitcher than he did versus finesse pitchers, as defined by baseball-reference. So I’ll conclude that the problem is mostly reduced BABIP (I used (H-HR)/(AB-SO-HR) ) and reduced ISO late & close. A quick glance shows he also performed abysmally against top closers — I checked Isringhausen (OPS 452 in 14 PAs), Smoltz (392 in 41, some surely as a starter), Urbina (327 in 13), Tom Gordon (357 in 14), Rod Beck (500 in 16), Billy Wagner (429 in 14) and John Franco (397 in 13). While all small sample sizes, these start to add up to a not insignificant portion of his late & close PAs (1500). Basically, he was owned by other teams’ closers — right-handed power pitchers, his weakness.