Quote:
Originally Posted by clydepepper
...this were pulled from an Espn.com article:
And Pujols has been the least-valuable player in baseball, by WAR. And he has also been the third most clutch hitter in baseball? Cute conceit, but life doesn't really work that way
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if you understand WAR it can 100% work that way.
"clutch" isn't a skill , there is no such thing as a clutch hitter in the long term. Hitting in high leverage situations tends to resemble hitting in all situations, of course in one season, it can vary wildly creating the illusion of "clutchiness" but the truth is the batter has no control over what happens before they come to the plate, so they don't get credit for it whenever they hit. So, WAR doesn't account for who was on base when you hit because you had nothing too do with it.
It's why RBI's are such a bad stat to judge hitting quality on. You didn't put those guys on base, you just got rewarded for getting a hit with them there.
now, just to clarify, CLUTCH situations exist, and guys will often come through in those individual situations above and beyond their normal ability. But there is no evidence that it exists as a skill for this player rather than the other player. It isn't a repeatable trait that lies above and beyond their normal hitting ability. good hitters tend t hit good, and bad hitters bad OVER THE LONG TERM. small sample sizes can skew our thinking and create confirmation and recency bias.
If you disagree, please present some evidence because there has been a ton of work done on it and so far, none has been found.
http://research.sabr.org/journals/th...clutch-hitting