The Opposite of the Angels
One has to wonder what fans of the Cubs would’ve said if a little birdie foretold of Marlon Byrd, Starlin Castro, Carlos Silva, and Tom Gorzelanny’s seasons in the springtime. Sure, Angel Guzman would still be out, but with those four contributing so much, the Cubs would have to be contenders. To steal a bit from Carson Cistulli, if the Cubs’ fan on staff, the illustrious Bryan Smith, had his druthers, this Cubs’ season would disappear.
The list of disasters for the Cubs this season is long and stretches from Carlos Zambrano to Aramis Ramirez to Derrek Lee and beyond. We have this nifty little metric on the leaderboards and player pages called “Clutch”. Essentially, it measures if a batter hits better or worse in – you guessed it – clutch situations than they normally do. The Cubs as a team are hitting worse. Far worse. Like -5.88 wins worse.
The most critical offenders are Geovany Soto (-1.96), Tyler Colvin (-1.06), Lee (-0.95) the departed Ryan Theriot (-0.84), Alfonso Soriano (-0.75), and Ramirez (-0.50). As it turns out, those six batters account for nearly 50% of the Cubs’ high leverage plate appearances. Whenever that much of your lineup is having serious issues hitting in big spots, trouble is bound to ensue. At first blush, with the talent on this roster, it looks like a feature of the offense that regression and a fresh slate will ostracize. Slight problem there: that last sentence could apply to eight of the last ten seasons and now nine of the last eleven. Here are the Cubs’ Clutch scores dating back to 2000:
2010: -5.88
2009: -4.98
2008: 0.90
2007: -3.10
2006: 0.10
2005: -2.63
2004: -6.52
2003: -2.15
2002: -5.96
2001: -0.85
2000: -3.79
That, folks, is a total of -35 wins. The Angels have become spectacles of clutch hitting perfection. If you take their Clutch scores since 2000 and add them all up, you won’t reach 20 wins and if you only add up the positive values you fall four shy of 30. The Cubs are essentially the anti-Angels but to a higher degree. If someone were to ink a holy book of unclutch named The Book of A-Rod (ironically, of course), the 2000-2010 Cubs would be all up in that.
There does not seem to be a common thread either. They’ve had four different managers over this span, numerous hitting coaches – including the highly praised Rudy Jaramillo – and even a couple of general managers. Maybe everything, from teaching to evaluation and preparation methods remained the same, but that seems unlikely. This phenomenon drains on players homegrown and free agents signed alike. It appears to hold no discrimination for age or position. The only thing constant is that it has zapped the Cubs for the last decade plus and the answer as to why is mystifying.
It’s quite obviously the curse
Expectation getting too much to handle for the Cubs, gotta feel for them!!
As a Cubs fan, I’ve expected as much. To have a stat to back that up doesn’t make me feel any better. I just wish you could point to something as the cause. Although since they haven’t developed too many positional players choosing instead the free agent route, blaming the franchise for not teaching the fundamentals may not be proper either. It is frustrating as anything watching a guy at 3rd with less than 2 outs get stranded more often than not. If anything looking further than shiny HR, BA or RBI should be a priority for the new GM (assuming Hendry is out). Of course he’ll have to contend with the huge salaries (e.g. Soriano & Zambrano) that are dragging on this team for the next few years at the same time.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think Hendry is going anywhere, at least until his contract is up in two years. The new owner’s unwillingness to eat salary in trades points to that. The Cubs do have an honest-to-goodness statistical analyst on staff now (better late than never?) so I think the best we can hope for is an improved Hendry regime.
The idea of a team being clutch is complete BS. The Angels have always had good BA teams, obviously they are going to get more hits in clutch situations… because they get more hits in every situation.
This clutch stat compares how a hitter does in clutch situations to how they hit in every situation. As it says in its definition, if a player hits .300 in high leverage situations but hits .300 all the time, this clutch stat says he’s not clutch. So a team that has a higher BA all the time isn’t going to measure higher than a team with a lower BA unless they hit even better in the clutch.
Is that true, though? Shouldn’t we naturally expect most hitters to hit worse in clutch situations (given pressure, the fact that they tend to face better pitchers in high-leverage situations, etc.)? So if a guy does hit .300 all the time and then hits .300 in the clutch, I would argue he is clutch if it’s expected he might only hit .275.
Well what are the odds of any team averaging -3.5 clutch wins over 10 years? It would have to be really, really low for this to be statistically significant, RE: are the Cubs worse in the clutch than an average MLB team?
I suspect the Mariners have averaged worse than -3.5 clutch wins over 2002-2010. But maybe it has just seemed that way.
But wouldn’t any six batters tend to account for nearly 50% of any of the Cubs’ plate appearances — regardless of leverage? In fact, given that most of those guys are/were regular starters and your batting order is only 9 players, and even considering more clutch situations coming in late innings with more PH substitutions, 50% for six players sounds kind of low.
Mariners clutch hitting:
2010: 1.76
2009: 3.01
2008: 0.15
2007: 3.90
2006: -2.28
2005: 1.52
2004: -3.82
2003: 3.85
2002: 1.44
Total: 9.53
Nobody’s going to want to face the Astros in the playoffs 😉
Aramis Ramirez’s decline is the crux of the problem. Looking over the past 5+ years, he’s the staple of the offense. Up to last year, he had basically been as consistent as Pujols and cabrera (not as good, but still very consistently productive).
When he’s out of the lineup, Lee falls apart … and the Cubs sputter. For us followers of the other teams in the NLC, we will always hate PIT for giving Ramirez away to the Cubs for nothing.
My 9yo is a Cub fan (Blue disease as it’s known), and he is “Colvin Crazy”. It’s interesting that the Cubs have sort of been “forced” to have smart management. Rather than just continually overpaying for decling star players, they are getting some good production out of young players … something which they haven’t seemingly don since the late 80s, as they’re always trying to “win it this year”, instead of having a real plan.
Doesn’t anyone think the Cubs horrendous facilities and heavy schedule of day games might contribute to this phenomenon? They are able to do less pregame preparation than other teams due to their game times. Even when they are able to get time in the cages they are in dank, dimly light facilities under the bleachers. That is a far cry from the state of the art batting cages that exist in most new parks. People might say that their opponents have to play in the day also, but the Cubs do it far more than any other team in baseball. My opinions is that baseball is about getting in a groove and staying there because of concentration and repetition and I believe the constant day schedule really hurts the Cubs form any kind of rhythm. That is not even to mention the fact that the wind causes Wrigley field to play like two completely different parks. But it must be a curse, I’m sure all of these variables unique to one ballclub for the last 35 years plus are inconsequential.