More on The Cubs’ Clutch Hitting
Earlier I detailed the Cubs’ clutch-hitting woes over the past decade-plus. I’m back with more stats on a league-wide level to support the insanity of the situation.
After taking each team’s Clutch batting score from 2000 until the 2010 season and averaging them on a per-team basis, I found that the mean is -7.26 wins and the standard deviation is 12.7. That means that the Cubs (-35.1) are more than two standard deviations away from the mean. The Diamondbacks (-26.2), Reds (-24.1), and Rockies (-22.6) are all a standard deviation away on the same side of the scale as the Cubs. Meanwhile the Angels (16), Twins (14.7), Mariners (11.7), Athletics (8.9), and Royals (8.5) are more than one standard deviation away from the mean on the other side.
No team, though, is as far away from that mean as the Cubs. The data presents a normal distribution, with 20 of the 30 teams falling within one standard deviation of the mean and every team but those Cubs falling within two standard deviations of the mean; making the Cubs a genuinely remarkable story. One that I have no explanation for other than, that is baseball.
I then ran a standard deviation on a team-by-team basis, to see if the Cubs were amongst the team with the most consistent Clutch scores. As it turns out, they are near the middle of the pack at eleventh. The most impressive team, from my perspective, is the Twins. Who have one of the highest cumulative Clutch batting scores and the second lowest deviations. The Angels are on the flip side, with a standard deviation of nearly four wins and the Reds, well, they’re a special story, with a standard deviation over eight thanks to some hot and cold seasons.
Below the jump is a complete list of teams and their cumulative Clutch hitting scores.
Team Total
Angels 16.04
Twins 14.66
Mariners 11.7
Athletics 11.17
Giants 8.87
Royals 8.49
Yankees 4.76
Cardinals -0.75
Padres -1.01
Red Sox -4.07
White Sox -5.19
Astros -5.3
Devil Rays -6.55
Marlins -7.34
Blue Jays -7.54
Phillies -7.71
Nationals -10.5
Braves -11.08
Mets -11.44
Dodgers -12.49
Brewers -13.39
Indians -14.12
Rangers -14.44
Orioles -16.8
Tigers -17.84
Pirates -18.05
Rockies -22.56
Reds -24.11
Diamondbacks -26.21
Cubs -35.13
I believe that is what you call Cubbery.
I use to get on Eric Seidman a lot about his use of the Clutch statistic when it first came out a couple of years ago. The Clutch statistic defined here is essentially how well does a player perform in high leverage situations relative to his normal performance. That definition negatively effects the best players in the league. Just using made up numbers, say Albert Pujols has a .400 wOBA normally and a .390 wOBA in clutch situations, but Juan Pierre has a .330 wOBA normally and a .340 wOBA in clutch situations. That Clutch statistic says Pierre > Pujols. However, if the game is on the line I want Pujols batting over Pierre because .390>.340.
Is there something I am missing in the calculation of this statistic, or will I just be forever angered by the illogical outcome presented above? Why can’t clutch be calculate relative to a league average in high leverage situations?
If you want “performance in high leverage situations” then that stat is available – on baseball-reference for one. This is just a definition of clutch that makes sense for answering the question – is there such a thing as a clutch hitter?
This just seems like confirmation bias. In general, we expect one team in 20 to be more than 2 standard deviations from the mean – the 2000-2010 Cubs just happen to be that team. If you look at the 1990’s, there will probably be a different team in that category – but it isn’t interesting unless it’s the Cubs.
That was my first thougth. My second thought, as a White Sox fan, was @*&% Twins!
One interesting thing is that this year (which I don’t think was included in the study), the Twins have a negative clutch rating while being 2nd overall in MLB in OPS (out of character for the Twins over the decade). This, along with the other teams in the top 6 suggest that there might be some sort of scrappiness factor to clutch hitting. They also have a fair number of high-platoon-split guys this year, which probably factors into it a bit.
I am not sure a study that takes the roster of the 2000 Cubs and adds their contribution to the 2009 Cubs to come to some sort pseudo-statistical conclusion confirms anything. Unless I am forgetting someone, that is a completely different roster of players – why would one combine them and treat them as the same data point?
This is a massive 10 year sample of 162 games each. The Cubs deviation from the mean is indeed significant.
I believe you need to league-normalize these. The NL teams add up to a lot less clutch (higher negative actually) than the AL teams. I presume the reason for this is that there’s an inefficiency inherent to pinch-hitting, and NL teams see a higher % of pinch-hit PA in high-LI situations, due to the pitcher being pulled for a PH. Since “Clutch” is based on +/- compared to a player’s norm, the bias of pinch-hitting needs to be accounted for. Assuming that both leagues are equal may not be perfect, but I think it’s much closer than assuming that there’s no league bias.
FWIW, I came out with Clutch/6400 PA ratings of -1.0516 for NL, and -0.1343 for AL over the years in your study (I just added up “Clutch” and divided by PA and then scaled for a pseudo-typical season total of 6400 PA).
Does any of this mean luck will swing back in the Cubs favor to make up for the last 20 years? Or are there other reasons than just luck for the Cubs deficiency in this area. What, other than more-wisely allocate their resources, can the Cubs do to combat this trend?
I’m sure you’re well aware of this, but luck doesn’t “swing back.”
Allocating resources will not help. In fact, the Cubs adherence to clutch hitting as a drafting criterion probably has hurt them greatly. “Clutch” hitting is not a “heritable” trait: that is, how well a guy does in the clutch (relative to his “normal” performance) is pretty much random from one year to the next: and given how few “high leverage” ABs players get each year, the expected binomial variation is really high. So, the Cubs make the mistake of drafting guys who get lucky on the binomial error without paying attention to the more important “heritable” (i.e., apt to be similar year-in and year-out) traits like OBP, etc.
So, what the Cubs need are high OPS players. Even if they perform worse in the clutch than otherwise, then they’ll still score a lot and thus let decent pitching win.
WTF? Where did you get that insane notion that the Cubs used “clutch hitting as a drafting criterion”? That is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read not only on Fangraphs but ever on the Internet. Boy, Hayden Simpson, Andrew Cashner, Mark Pawalek, Bobby Brownlie, Mark Prior and Kerry Wood were drafted for their “clutch hitting” abilities, right? You damned moron.
I think it’s more that there is no evidence, *as of yet*, that clutch hitting is heritable. If I had to bet on whether someone finds evidence of clutch hitting someday in the next 20 years, I’d take the ‘yes’ side, as I think would most GMs. Just ask Theo.
yeah… and acquiring high OBP players (and then not batting them behind guys who can’t hit their weight) would be better allocation of resources, correct?
So… the next question becomes: is there a correlation between pythagorean under/overperformance and cluth hitting? IIRC, the Angels are well-known for overperforming their pythagorean expected record — and lo and behold they sit at the top of the list. So this would mean that it isn’t so much Mike Scioscia Cool-Aid, but persistent clutch hitting.
At first, I noticed that 4 of the top 5 teams play on the west coast, so I thought that was a factor, but clearly the overall clutch numbers are influenced by park factors. The top teams (Anaheim, Minni, Seattle, Oakland, SF, KC, Yankees, St Louis, SD) all played most of the decade in pitcher friendly or neutral parks. The bottom teams (Cubs, Arizona, Cinci, Colorado) play in parks that favor hitters. There is still a lot of work to be done filtering the data, but I’m fairly certain that all teams’ clutch numbers will suffer in hitters’ parks because of the inflated overall numbers.
Thank you, I have just been searching for information about this topic for ages and yours is the greatest I have discovered till now. But, what about the bottom line? Are you sure about the source?