Kosuke the Clutch

Down three runs in the ninth inning on opening day, Kosuke Fukudome belted a three-run homer off of Eric Gagne to tie the game. The Cubs would ultimately lose, but Kosuke had earned himself the clutch label, and labels can be very hard to break. In certain cases these labels are undeserved, like calling David Ortiz clutch based on past results; the stats here at Fangraphs show he was one of the least clutch players last season and he has a -0.32 score this season. Likewise, players with negative labels will find themselves hard pressed to shake off the opinions pointed in their direction.

Looking at Kosuke’s numbers, however, it seems he was properly labeled, at least so far. In case you cannot recite all of his numbers off the top of your head, here they are:

Fukudome 2008
46 GP, 51-167, 11 2B, 2 3B, 2 HR, 17 RBI, 30 BB, 27 K
.305/.409/.439, .355 BABIP
1.11 WPA, 0.58 WPA/LI, 0.52 Clutch

More facts about him? Well, his home/road splits have been pretty drastic:

Home: .393/.505/.562
Road: .205/.292/.282

And his splits with runners on base are drastic as well:

Nobody On: 104 PA, .261/.346/.337, 12 BB, 18 K
Runners On: 95 PA, .360/.479/.547, 18 BB, 9 K

The clutch score is what stuck with me, though, as he ranks 10th in the NL. Looking at a few other areas that could determine clutchiness, the results seemed to match:

High Leverage: 40 PA, .412/.462/.647
Within 1 Run: 49 PA, .361/.463/.482
Tie Game: 100 PA, .419/.490/.581

The clutch stat here does not measure performance in clutch situations but rather how a player performs in the high leverage situations as compared to context-neutral situations. Based on that definition, Kosuke is definitely stepping up in the situations in which his team needs him to. He might not be lighting the world on fire with extra base hits but these numbers clearly suggest Kosuke still deserves the label assigned on opening day.