Definitely an interesting idea.

Do we know this is true? Do players with, lets say, above average WPA/LI, or whatever stat you want to use, have higher clutch scores than players with below average WPA/LI? Are there major differences in the top 10% and bottom 10% percentiles?

I might take a look at this when I get the chance if someone doesn’t beat me to it, but it seems to me that this is the predominant complaint?

I do agree it’s a stat that measures which players make up for bad performance elsewhere with good performance in clutch situations.

I actually didn’t create the stat so I won’t take offense to criticisms of it; I just want it to be known more publicly what exactly it tries to measure. It does a great job at measuring what it intends do, though it seems what it intends to measure might not jive with what everyone wants.

I think as long as we understand it’s a secondary type metric we’re all the better, but yeah, it’s definitely a wide open topic. I have a whole chapter in my book on clutch and stat-padding, about 25-32 pages, and I still don’t think I tackled even 75% of it.

In fact, I’ll admit my post was a bit of a thread-hijack, as what you were looking at was the specific trait of elevating performance in high-LI, while I riffed off that and pointed out that it’s not necessarily a good trait…

You rightly pointed out that the clutch stat wouldn’t be a good one to guide a decision of who you would want at bat or on the mound in a critical spot – I agree completely, I view the clutch stat as you’ve outlined it to be interesting, but not likely to guide very many game decisions. Which is fine, of course, there are loads of stats quoted all the that are partly or completely like that… It is interesting to see some unexpected names on the good side of this list.

(All of this assumes the existence of players who over time and large sample sizes consistently play better in clutch situations than normal situations. So far as I know — correct me if I’m wrong — such players haven’t been demonstrated to exist. And I know that there’s a big difference between clutch performance — what you are [usefully] measuring — and clutch players. I don’t mean to be criticizing what you are doing here at all.)

It does not tell us who performs the best in high LI situations. That would be something different. A player with a 1.000 OPS in high LI performed better than someone with a .900 OPS in high LI, no questions asked; however, the definition of clutch varies from person to person so much and so often, that confusion arises from the stat kept here because many people mistake clutch for quality.

I admit it can be very confusing. Seeing Pat Burrell’s clutch score and realizing it ranks 3rd or 4th or wherever it is now in the entire sport makes us think that Burrell is the 3rd or 4th best player in clutch situations. He may be, but that is taking a statistic making measurement A and coming to conclusion B. He would have raised his performance in these situations the 3rd or 4th most but it does not tell us about the performance in general.

It may be not be a perfect stat but it definitely measures what it intends to measure. I personally feel this is what the concept clutch refers to. Others may disagree, and rightly so, but to me raising your performance level in crucial situaitons is clutch.

Then again, I will never use clutch to make decisions on a given player since it is more of a secondary or interest-inducing stat than a concrete one like WPA or WPA/LI. If I want to know the best performers in ‘clutch’ situations I’ll find who has the best slash line or OPS or baseruns or something else in those situations, since the overall numbers would be more indicative of the level or performance; the stat here indicates who performs better in them than they would normally.