Clutch hitting isn’t that real of a thing. We don’t need to dwell on this, right? We’ve been over this so many times and I think we all share a common understanding. Sure, there’s room for clutch hitting to be a legitimate skill. Even when it might be a legitimate skill, it doesn’t make or break a player or team. The majority of what we observe appears to be luck, at least when it comes to significant over- or underachieving. That’s it. That’s where the conversation is.

So, boy, do I have a graphic for you! We have a win-expectancy-based statistic, known as Clutch. There’s Clutch for relief pitching, Clutch for starting pitching, and Clutch for hitting. In this plot, I’m showing 2015 team offensive Clutch, and 2016 team offensive Clutch. You should immediately notice two things. One, the distribution is random. Two, the Astros.

In offensive Clutch, last year, the Astros ranked second-worst. In offensive Clutch, this year, the Astros rank third-worst. So they haven’t been in the basement in either individual season, but when you combine them, then the Astros show up in last, and they’re buried. They have a combined offensive Clutch score of -13.8. Next-worst are the Brewers, at -8.7. That’s a difference of five wins. This is how unclutch Astros hitters have been.

Now, I should note the league average isn’t zero — it’s actually about -3 or -4. These numbers suggest that hitters overall are slightly unclutch, maybe because of advancements in bullpen usage. Anyway, between the Astros and the average would be something like 10 wins. That’s 10 wins over less than two full seasons. That’s 10 wins the Astros might have if their hitting had simply not been unclutch. I know I’ve already said it’s mostly random. I continue to believe it’s mostly random. Maybe a very small factor here is how the Astros strike out. But their offensive timing has just plain sucked. I don’t know how to explain it, but I do know how to observe it, and I’m sure it’s frustrated the clubhouse and the whole organization.

Since the start of last season, the Astros rank first in baseball in team OPS in what Baseball-Reference considers low-leverage situations. Bump it up to medium leverage, and the Astros rank 19th. Go all the way to high leverage, and the Astros rank 25th. In a sense that would be the explanation, but that doesn’t really explain things as much as it just re-states them. What we know about is the bad timing. If not the strikeouts, it could conceivably have something to do with general player inexperience. But I’m here grasping at straws. If there’s anything to research, it’s beyond what I can do in a small amount of time. Let’s just agree to end here today.

Last season, the Astros finished second in the AL West, two games out of first. This season, they’re in the hunt, but off the pace for the wild card. Who knows how things could be? Who knows how things could’ve been? Timing isn’t everything, but it’s an awful lot of it.

I just wrote a little bit about Joc Pederson making gains in his ability to make contact. The first commenter underneath got me thinking about Javier Baez. In the Pederson post, I began by reflecting on George Springer, but Baez was a little like Springer to an even somehow more extreme degree. When Baez was a prospect, it’s possible no one else had his maximum bat speed. But at the same time, few shared his propensity for swinging and missing. Fold in an over-aggressive approach and every single at-bat was boom or bust.

Baez got extended playing time as a rookie in 2014. During the PITCHf/x era, there have been more than 3,000 player seasons with at least 200 plate appearances. Baez posted the lowest contact rate out of all of them, at 59%. He wasn’t too hard to diagnose. Barring something almost unbelievable, Baez would need to get better at contact in order to have a real big-league career.

Good news! Javier Baez is making it. He’s 23, he has a league-average wRC+, and this is how his contact has gone:

He still misses the ball, and he still swings at a whole lot of pitches out of the strike zone, but where Baez as a rookie struck out an impossible 42% of the time, now he’s down to 25%. Javier Baez is putting things together. He should factor firmly into the Cubs’ plans, if nothing else but as a valuable trade asset. The bat is meeting the ball more often, and that was always going to be the struggle.

Shifting gears, turn your attention to the Royals. Last offseason, the Royals re-signed Alex Gordon, getting something of a hometown discount in the process. I wrote about that, and here’s a quick excerpt!

[…]one, Gordon shouldn’t hit the wall all of a sudden[…]

Gordon this year has been worth 0.3 WAR. After back-to-back wRC+ marks of 122, this year he’s down at 77. Even more troubling, Gordon hasn’t been hitting the baseball. His approach and his results were always consistent. In a sense I guess they might still be considered consistent, but they are also much much worse. Gordon’s career contact:

There’s nothing subtle about that. And you could blame a wrist injury he sustained toward the end of May, but there’s something curious — Gordon, before that, batted 166 times, with bad offense and an elevated strikeout rate. Gordon, after that, has batted 171 times, with bad offense and an elevated strikeout rate. Alex Gordon was having problems making contact before getting hurt, so I don’t know what one’s supposed to make of that. Gordon has gone through ruts before, and he’s earned the benefit of the doubt. But this is worrisome, not just because Gordon is a franchise legend, but also because the Royals are a team that can’t afford to spend such big money on underachievers. Don’t sleep on Gordon as one of the big reasons why these Royals probably aren’t getting back to the playoffs.

Baseball is wonderful and baseball is horrible. There’s evidence for both of these everywhere, but Baez and Gordon are stuck in my mind. As recently as 2014, Gordon had the higher wRC+ by 69 points. He had the higher contact rate by 19 points. Now it’s 2016, and they’ve both cleared 300 trips to the plate. Baez has been the better hitter. And so much more improbably, Baez has made more frequent contact. I’ll be damned. This is a hell of a thing that we watch.