Quote:
Originally Posted by JayP
Well, even if being "clutch" existed (which is debatable), there's a bunch of advanced stats out there that try to quantify it (and the methodology is pretty sound).
Fangraphs.com has a whole slew of them, but the most relevant is the aptly named "Clutch" stat. Here's their one-line definition of it:
"How much better or worse a player does in high leverage situations than he would have done in a context neutral environment."
High leverage situations being those where the course of the AB has a major influence of the odds of your team winning/losing (win probability added/subtracted). In other words, clutch situations.
Young rated at -0.43 for his career. Average that total amongst his career, and it's around -0.04/year. A clutch score of 0.00 basically means the player hits the same regardless of the situation. So basically by this measure Young isn't clutch nor is he a choker.
For comparison's sake, EE is +0.82 for his career, which is pretty solid (but nothing spectacular) for how many games he's played.
Clutch is one of those funny things about baseball that's almost impossible to judge by the naked eye. There's way too many games to watch everything so even a hardcore baseball fan is going to miss a chunk of innings every year. Those innings could easily be the ones that disprove people's impressions of a players clutchness. The only real time when people don't miss an inning for an extended period of time is a playoff run, but that is flawed in that a playoff run is at most a 19 game sample size.
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Honestly. Thanks for the education on these stats.
But I would still prefer to have Young as my third baseman than EE.