Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
As I posted before his OPS against is 100 points or close to it higher in the post-season. Want to spin that away too? 
I guess by your logic we should throw out all the legendary great post season performances too, like Mathewson, Gibson, etc. Just coincidence from small sample sizes that they pitched their best games under that pressure. Could just as easily have pitched their worst games.
You remind me of a poli sci professor I had in college. He was obsessed with data, his life's work was to come up with equations for predicting the likelihood of wars at any given time. Human considerations had nothing to do with it. |
Argument from incredulity.....
any given performance can be good or bad, to claim that said performance is a reflection on a person't ability as an entire is fallacious. (ie: "Kershaw is a bad playoff pitcher") Those players you mentioned had great playoff numbers, but not in any sample size great enough that we can start making honest attributions of "clutch" or "big game pitcher" to them. The sample size isn't large enough.
Clutch is a myth as a skill, the numbers bare this out, good pitchers pitch good, bad hitters hit bad, in any given start a bad/good player can do lots of different things with lots of different results, but the data says that when the sample size reaches a certain threshold they will perform at or around their career averages.
OPS against is a flawed stat as it overvalues slugging and undervalues OBP (and ignores BABIP)
Baseball is a results game, it has statistics that tell us how people performed. If you ignore the facts in favor of whim or emotion you are guilty of confirmation bias and an argument based on this isn't worth the paper it's written on. btw, your poly-sci comparison is also a fallacy as predicting the likelihood of a war is not the same as studying the results of a baseball game. you use stats, you just don't use the new ones, but it's the same thing just more refined.
ETA: after his last start Kershaw's FIP in the playoffs is 2.92 (vs 2.55 for his career) his xFIP (park and league adjusted) is now 3.09 (vs 2.92 for his career) he is striking out 1 more per 9 in the playoffs, walking only .5 more per 9 he has been hurt by BABIP and HR/FB which shows he has been unlucky
this year his slash line looks like this 3.72 ERA 1.18 FIP 2.99 xFIP vs a regular season of 1.69 1.80 2.28 so pretty close to normal (and we would expect it to be a tad bit higher due to the overall quality of competition.
remember how everyone though Big Papi was "clutch?" carer wRC+ 140, in playoffs? 144, career wOBA .392, in playoffs? .398 not much difference at all.
Derek Jeter? 119 wRC+ career, 121 in playoffs
Jack Morris? career era and fip of 3.90/3.94 in playoffs 3.80/3.74