Hitting in the Clutch

In their 2007 work “The Book” (as in “Managing by …”), Tango, Lichtman and Dolphin used hard statistical analysis to debunk any number of notional ideas about baseball players and teams, among them that certain players are “clutch” performers. Their analysis indicated that whatever clutch tendencies players might exhibit in a given season would “correct” over time such that performance levels over a career would be much the same in “clutch” situations as in any other.

But, that doesn’t stop us from looking at those one-season tendencies, which I’ll explore next in looking at the players (like the Rockies’ Nolan Arenado to the left) who were best in the clutch in the 2016 season.

Baseball-Reference.com offers affordable subscriptions (highly recommended) to their “Play Index” search engine for accessing the wealth of statistical data hosted on the site. Among the tools available with Play Index is something called Split Finder which, as the name indicates, provides statistical breakdowns based on an array of different “splits” across a broad range of categories. So, it is to Split Finder that I turned to find these traditional clutch splits:

  • Men On Base
  • Runners in Scoring Position
  • Runners in Scoring Position with 2 Outs
  • Late and Close

The first three are self-explanatory, while “Late and Close” includes all PAs from the 7th inning on with a score difference of one run or less, or with the tying run on base, at bat or on deck (thanks David P for this explanation). Looking at the 146 players with a qualified (502 PA) batting season last year, the best and worst OPS results in the above splits look like this.

So, many names at the top of these lists that are not a surprise and a few (Stephen Piscotty, Travis Shaw, Logan Forsythe) that are. At the bottom of the list, Zack Cozart takes the prize of a bottom 10 result in all four splits, with Curtis Granderson close behind with three bottom 10’s (Granderson’s struggles to produce RBI were much remarked on by HHS readers last year; now, we know why).

Looking at how much better or worse those raw OPS scores were compared to these players’ overall OPS results yields this leaderboard.

The numbers shown are the difference between the players’ OPS results in these splits and their overall season OPS. We see many of the same names, but also some new ones. It’s notable that the magnitude of the OPS differences increases markedly from Men On to RISP and, to a lesser degree, from RISP to RISP – 2 Outs. Are these players really that much better at producing when runs are available? Or, is some other factor at play?

My sense is that, indeed, there is another factor at play that I’ll term “selection bias”. What I mean by that is that, for the first three of these splits, the plate appearances represented will occur more frequently in games when these players and their teams are “having their way” with their opponents’ pitching offerings. So, while the numbers may indicate, to some degree, a tendency for some batters to come through (or not) in the clutch, the positive results are likely also indicating that these players were simply taking advantage of inferior pitching.

To help to counter the selection bias inherent in the first set of metrics, I also found some additional splits that are more neutral or even skewed to games when the pitchers were having the upper hand.

  • Leading Off an Inning
  • Two Outs
  • Behind in the Game

The first split is neutral in the sense that there is the same number of these events in every game, with a slight bias to games where the pitching is dominating in that the leadoff PAs in those games represent a larger proportion of all of the PAs in the game. The second split is also mostly neutral, with a slight bias in the other direction in that there will be more of these events in games with more PAs (i.e. when the batters are dominating). The third one is reserved, of course, only for batters whose teams are trailing in a game, which most often means batters who are facing tougher pitching; in 2016, OPS for all of MLB was .718 when behind, .746 when tied, and .755 when ahead.

It may not be intuitively obvious why these splits would evidence clutch characteristics, so let me explain. Leading off an inning and batting with two outs were chosen because of the significant difference in run expectancy that results depending on whether a player makes an out or not. Going back to “The Book”, the difference in run expectancy between making an out and reaching first base as the first batter of an inning amounted to almost two-thirds of a run (.657 to be exact) for the years 1999-2002, or about .600 runs for 2016. That’s not chump change! Similarly, when batting with two outs, while the run expectancy change between an out or reaching base will depend on which bases are occupied (it ranged from about one-tenth to three-quarters of a run in 2016), what is known with certainty is that an out reduces that expectancy to zero every time. So, in the sense that the difference between an out or reaching base is so clear cut in these splits, doing the latter can be characterized as a clutch performance. Batting when behind most often does not change the ultimate game result (in 2016, teams trailing after one inning posted a .306 winning percentage that, of course, reduced the later in the game a team was trailing), but doing well in this split is nevertheless important if a team harbors any hope of making a comeback.

While this second set of splits don’t seem like clutch stats in the same way the first set of splits did, I think it’s worthwhile looking at them, if only to provide a bit of counter-weight to the selection bias inherent in that first group of metrics. Here is that leaderboard for OPS.

Notably, these results are less extreme, at both ends of the spectrum, than what was seen for the fist set of metrics, a result that would be expected for splits with less inherent selection bias. That pattern holds for OPS difference as well, as shown below.

After those dismal results for the first set of metrics, good to see Zack Cozart doing well in the leadoff split (where we finally see a chink in Nolan Arenado’s armor). Russell Martin‘s OPS differences are almost mirror images of each other, for the Leadoff and 2 Outs splits.

You might be wondering just what proportion of PA’s are represented by these splits. Here are those results, together with the composite totals for the two sets of splits, which I’ve termed the “hard” (first set) and “soft” (second set) metrics.

While it wasn’t planned that way, the hard and soft metrics each approximate about half of an “average” player’s PAs. So, just for fun, lets throw the whole bunch of splits into a blender and see what we get. Here’s that leaderboard.


To compile this overall metric, the seven different splits were weighted individually for each player based on the percentage of PAs each split represented for that player. So, the result is really showing how each player did in his own personal context. It’s just a fun list, so not to be taken too seriously, but I probably would have been guessing for a really long time before coming up with the bottom three names for the OPS Diff list. The last column is the average of all %PAs for the seven different splits – Toronto may want to rethink its batting order next year, as Josh Donaldson is probably not the guy you want bringing up the rear in this category.

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no statistician but
no statistician but
7 years ago

Also just for fun, here are some stats that I think qualify for long term clutch performance, despite what Tango et al have found.

Career extra innings:

G—131
PA—162
AB—122
R—39
H—44
2B—8
3B—1
HR—14
RBI—28
BB—40
SO—19
BA—.361
OBP—.519
SLG—.787
OPS—1.305

I’ve surveyed a lot of the most likely candidates—Ruth, Williams, Gehrig, Hornsby, and a few others—to see if anyone beats, matches, or comes close to this extra inning performance, and I can find no one, although my search wasn’t exhaustive.

David P
David P
7 years ago
Reply to  Doug

The split results for hitting in extra innings are weird. For some reason, almost all of the players who appear in the PI results played from the 70s on. But there are a few exceptions. Jackie Robinson shows up in the results. As does Jim Gilliam. And Luis Aparicio. I have no idea why those players would show up but not earlier ones. I can’t imagine there’s a problem with missing data…seems like separating the extra innings PAs from the 1-9 PAs would be pretty easy. Anyway, for the 481 players that are in the PI, here’s the biggest +OPS… Read more »

Richard Chester
Richard Chester
7 years ago
Reply to  David P

In addition to the lists above my PI run shows Don Slaught at +.284, Wally Post at -.290, Floyd Robinson at -.258 and Felipe Lopez at -.250.
Also I believe those differences are between extra innings and all innings.

David P
David P
7 years ago

Yeah, I originally set the search criteria to 5,000+ career PAs and then added in the 100 PAs in extra innings without taking out the first criteria.

But the results are extra innings vs total. For example Carlos Pena has a career OPS of .808 vs 1.164 in extra innings. Which results in the +.356 above.

Doug
Doug
7 years ago
Reply to  David P

There are still sizable gaps in the date for pre-1950 games, though those gaps are being filled in quite quickly recently, as more play-by-play data are compiled (used to be fairly unusual to find PBP data for a pre-1950 game; now it seems more unusual not to find these data, especially for games from the 1940s). Quite the task, when you think about, first to find a source for that data, then to enter it all in the database, verify it, etc. You can find whatever data are available by unchecking the P-I box that says “Exclude Results Which are… Read more »

David P
David P
7 years ago
Reply to  Doug

Thanks Doug! For some reason I thought the PBP data was complete back to the early 1910s.

birtelcom
birtelcom
7 years ago
Reply to  David P

An example of why one has to be careful with definitive splits conclusions from b-ref even for the 1960s: Suppose we ask the Play Index split finder, who had the most hits in the 6th inning for the full period 1960-1969? Make sure you are including in the result all the info b-ref has by un-checking the “Exclude Incomplete Information” box (if this box is checked, the Play Index will exclude from the result entire player-seasons that are missing even a small amount of data for that player). When I run this query, I get Roberto Clemente at #1 with… Read more »

David P
David P
7 years ago

Doug – If you look under a individual player’s split, right under the “Clutch Stats’ section, it says:

“Late & Close are Plate Appearances in the 7th or later with the batting team tied, ahead by one, or the tying run at least on deck.”

Doug
Doug
7 years ago
Reply to  David P

Thanks, David.

Richard Chester
Richard Chester
7 years ago

I have always been interested in determining the percentage of base runners driven in by a player. Using an Excel spreadsheet and the PI Split Finder I calculated that percentage for all qualified batters in 2016. I ignored all PA in which the batter received a BB except for when the bases were loaded. Here are the top values: 0.243 …….. David Ortiz 0.240 …….. Daniel Murphy 0.235 …….. Nolan Arenado 0.224 …….. Joey Votto 0.218 …….. Mookie Betts 0.212 …….. Mike Trout 0.210 …….. Paul Goldschmidt 0.209 …….. Jose Altuve 0.209 …….. Hanley Ramirez 0.206 …….. Charlie Blackmon 0.206… Read more »

Doug
Doug
7 years ago

Another clutch stat is career walk-off hits. For the ones that P-I knows about, these players have the most (active players bolded): 26 – Frank Robinson 21 – Dusty Baker 20 – David Ortiz, Andre Dawson, Tony Perez 19 – Albert Pujols,Lou Whitaker, Roberto Clemente, Rusty Staub, Manny Mota 18 – Carlton Fisk, Don Baylor, Hank Aaron, Brooks Robinson 17 – Barry Bonds, Lance Parrish, Graig Nettles, Jack Clark, Pete Rose, Stan Musial 16 – Adrian Beltre, Andruw Jones, Harold Baines, Eddie Murray, George Hendrick, Jose Cruz, Al Kaline, Mickey Mantle Musial’s actual total is likely a fair bit higher,… Read more »

Richard Chester
Richard Chester
7 years ago
Reply to  Doug

My PI run shows 19 for Musial.

Richard Chester
Richard Chester
7 years ago

Plus there are 2262 PA of Musial’s for which play data is not available.

Doug
Doug
7 years ago

That’s interesting. I got the 17 total from Event Finder.

Richard Chester
Richard Chester
7 years ago

Here’s what I got for the top 10 during Musial’s career, 1941-1963.

Stan Musial 19
Ted Kluszewski 15
Yogi Berra 14
Carl Furillo 14
Hector Lopez 14
Del Ennis 14
Frank Robinson 13
Mickey Vernon 13
Al Kaline 12
Vern Stephens 12

David P
David P
7 years ago

This shows Musial with 17 walk off hits:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/event_finder.cgi?year=0&n1=musiast01&id=musiast01&type=b#gotresults&year=Career&year_to=1963&divisory=1&from=button&type=b&id=musiast01&event=modH&out_type=&ajax=1&submitter=1

Also, a bit strange that Jim Thome, who holds the record with 13 walk off home runs, doesn’t show up on Doug’s list. He only had 2 non-HR walk offs in his career.

David P
David P
7 years ago
Reply to  David P

You may need to click on Get Report after clicking the link above.

Richard Chester
Richard Chester
7 years ago
Reply to  David P

I see where the discrepancy lies. I ran the PI for Plate Appearances and Musial had one walk-off BB and one walk-off popfly (believe it or not). On 5-31-1963 in a game against the Giants Musial came to bat in the bottom of the 9th with the score tied, bases loaded and 0 out. The Play Description reads “Popfly: 2B; Flood scores”, the play was recorded as an out.

Doug
Doug
7 years ago

I'[m guessing that was a little bloop behind second base that the second baseman either dove to catch or caught on the run heading towards the outfield.

Richard Chester
Richard Chester
7 years ago
Reply to  Doug

Here’s the story: On May 31, 1963, an unusual pop fly off the bat of Stan Musial proved be a game winning hit in a hard fought 6-5 win over the Giants at Sportsman’s Park. The Birds had found themselves down 5-2, before a comeback began to mount in the bottom of the sixth, when Tim McCarver cut the deficit in half by knocking in a run. Bill White smashed a two-run shot in the seventh with a man on in the seventh to tie it, before a ninth inning that would leave the fans surprised by the turn of… Read more »

Doug
Doug
7 years ago

The Giants deserved the lose that one.

Probably, you’d need to play for 22 seasons like Musial before you had something as weird as a walk-off, infield fly rule, pop-up.

Richard Chester
Richard Chester
7 years ago

Here’s my correction to most walk-off hits during Musial’s career, 1941-1963:

Stan Musial 17
Ted Kluszewski 15
Carl Furillo 14
Hector Lopez 13
Frank Robinson 12
Al Kaline 12
Mickey Vernon 12
Gene Woodling 12
Bobby Thomson 11
Mickey Mantle 11
Vern Stephens 11
Willie Jones 11
Del Ennis 11
Ken Boyer 11
Gus Bell 11

birtelcom
birtelcom
7 years ago

B-Ref’s has a stat it calls “Clutch”, which uses Win Probability Added numbers to calculate how much better, or worse, a hitter performed in higher leverage than lower leverage situations. That doesn’t mean a high Clutch hitter hit well in high-leverage situations, only that he he better in those situations than in lower-leverage situations. The top 5 in Clutch in 2016 (min. 502 PAs): Freddy Galvis Melky Cabrera Adonis Garcia Adrian Beltre Leonys Martin And the bottom 5: Michael Saunders Nelson Cruz Kris Bryant Edward Encarnacion Jackie Bradley Kris Bryant in 2016 had an OPS of 1.030 in 341 “low… Read more »

Doug
Doug
7 years ago
Reply to  birtelcom

Looks like my composite metric was a pretty close match, at least for the bottom of the scale, as three of the bottom five (Bryant, Saunders, Cruz) of B-R’s “Clutch” stat were in the the bottom 6 of the composite metric.

And Beltre and Garcia in the top 5 of “Clutch”made top 8 in Late & Close.