Tango on Baseball Archives

Gleeman - Jeter - Clutch (October 30, 2003)

In his entire post-season career, a total of 99 games spread over eight seasons, Derek Jeter is a .210/.355/.306 hitter with runners in scoring position and a .245/.345/.329 hitter with men on base.

--posted by TangoTiger at 12:09 PM EDT

Posted 12:18 p.m., October 30, 2003 (#1) - Sylvain(e-mail)
Speaking about clutch hitting, here is a list of articles on the web:
(name of the article, author, URL)

Clutch Hitting Study David Grabiner http://www.baseball1.com/bb-data/grabiner/fullclutch.html
Clutch Hitting Leaders, 1987-2001 Cyril Morong
http://hometown.aol.com/cyrilmorong/myhomepage/clutch.htm
Clutch Hitting and Experience Cyril Morong http://hometown.aol.com/cyrilmorong/myhomepage/Clutch-experience.htm
Looking for Clutch Performance in One-Run Games Tom Ruane http://www.baseballstuff.com/btf/scholars/ruane/articles/onerun.htm
Situational Hitting Tom Ruane http://www.baseballstuff.com/btf/scholars/ruane/articles/situational_hitting.htm
Clutch Hitting Rob Neyer http://www.diamond-mind.com/articles/neyerclutch.htm
Hitting with Runners in Scoring Position Jim Albert http://bayes.bgsu.edu/papers/situation_paper3.pdf
Does experience help in the post-season? Tom Hanrahan http://www.philbirnbaum.com/btn2002-11.pdf
What makes a clutch situation Tom Hanrahan http://www.philbirnbaum.com/btn2001-02.pdf

Sylvain

Posted 1:22 p.m., October 30, 2003 (#2) - tangotiger
I wrote this elsewhere, but it applies to clutch hitting, pitcher's skill at preventing hits on balls in play, catcher's skill at blocking the plate, etc, etc, etc:

The sample size required to show evidence of clutch hitting is so large that we don't have the chance to prove clutch hitting. And, the likelihood is that even if some players are proven to be clutch hitters, then
1 - by the time you figure this out, he's 38 years old
2 - the impact will not be large enough that you would even care

The numbers at our disposal make it unlikely that we can ascertain who is a clutch hitter. If we want to figure out who is a clutch hitter, we have to look elsewhere.

Posted 2:53 p.m., October 30, 2003 (#3) - Scoriano
Derek Jeter is a .210/.355/.306 hitter with runners in scoring position and a .245/.345/.329 hitter with men on base

Well those numbers should be compared to his teammates and adjusted by the quality of the competition. And, one of these days I'll do the work and back out Jeter's 2001 ALCS and 2001 WS numbers. He got hurt in the last game against Oakland in the 2001 ALDS making a catch in which he fell into the stands. He was heavily taped and played in pain in the next two series. I don't think he would have played if those were normal regular season gmaes but this was the post-season and the Yankees had no real good choice. I don't think the comparisons that include these numbers are fair in evaluating Jeter's clutchness. He may not be clutch, but using those numbers are either apples versus oranges or two different types of apples in my view.

Posted 3:03 p.m., October 30, 2003 (#4) - tangotiger
Comparing to teammates: now you're really mincing it down, aren't you? I mean, I agree that this should be done, but if Jeter is
245/.345/.329 hitter with men on base
what do you expect to find with his teammates, something like
230/.310/.300?

You'd have to see Pedro-like numbers from his teammates to show that Jeter stood head and shoulders above them.

And if you take out Jeter's injured games, you have to do it to all injured players.

Posted 6:23 p.m., October 30, 2003 (#5) - David Smyth
There is too much emphasis on ability or future expectation when deciding who is a clutch hitter. Because of the sample size problem mentioned by Tango, the focus should simply be on the past. IOW, the label of "clutch hitting" is/should be a retrospective award, not a prospective one. If a guy hits .450 with RISP over a season, then he was a "clutch hitter" that season, and probably created more wins than his regular stats would suggest. That's really all there is to it--what you accomplish, you get credit for. If you hit well "in the clutch", then you hit well in the clutch, and were a clutch hitter over that period.

That doesn't have a lot to do with Jeter, who apparently has not been a clutch hitter in the postseason overall. Of course, he has had a few big clutch hits in the postseason, which has led to his apparent stellar reputation. That's essentially a media-level analysis, which is of course usually only half-baked. Remember, there's another deadline tomorrow, and you have to come up with an interesting slant.

Posted 6:48 p.m., October 30, 2003 (#6) - FJM
Let's take this out of the postseason context, so we don't have to worry so much about small sample sizes. The point about comparing Jeter to his teammates in similar situations is a valid one. If his average drops only 10 points under pressure while his teammates lose 20 points, then he is a "clutch hitter", at least in a relative sense. And the fact is, as a team, the Yankees hit 21 points worse with RISP & 2 Out than they did overall last year (.271-.250). Jeter? He hit 17 points BETTER (.341-.324). That's a 38-point swing. A fluke? Well, in 2000-2002 he hit .309 overall but .333 in the clutch, a 24-point improvement. The Yankees? They were .273 overall but only .249 with RISP & 2 Out, 24 points worse. A 48-point swing.

Posted 1:30 p.m., October 31, 2003 (#7) - Scoriano
mincing it down....And if you take out Jeter's injured games, you have to do it to all injured players.

If you want to have a better understanding of the player's performance you have to find a way to give effect to the particulars to get closer to the truth. I am not saying it is easy, but in Jeter's case the injury in 2001 was obvious and obviously hurt his hitting performance. If you watched the games, you could see he had trouble with his shoulder. I don't know for a fact that he would have sat if those were typical regular season games, but that's my strong sense. Similarly, I don't think you can ignore that Giambi's post-season numbers this year are hampered by his knee injury. It's just part of the overall attempt to engage in complete analysis. The numbers are the numbers, no doubt, but the overall analysis and the explanations, the discussions about it should include all relevant facts of which injuries may be one large component that should not be ignored in all cases.

You'd have to see Pedro-like numbers from his teammates to show that Jeter stood head and shoulders above them.

I am not sure whether the "head and shoulders" test should be the test, and what the delta would need to be to satisfy it, but there does appear to be a lot of Pedro-like performance in the post-season Yankee playoff series, and some trend for Jeter to perform above his teammates:

1. Yanks 03 PS .250 .324 .389 .713/Jeter .314 .385 .471 .856
2. Yanks 03 WS .261 .338 .406 .743/Jeter .346 .393 .462 .854
3. Yanks 03 CS .227 .299 .378 .677/Jeter .233 .281 .400 .681
4. Yanks 03 DS .275 .344 .384 .728/Jeter .429 .556 .643 1.198
5. Yanks 02 DS .281 .358 .467////Jeter .500 .556 .875
6. Yanks 01 WS .183 .237 .288////Jeter .148 .148 .259 (injured) The Yankees were facing Pedro-like pitching in this series, and it is the one in which they have the most at bats (226) as a team since '96.
7. Yanks 01 CS .264 .357 .440////Jeter .118 .211 .118 (injured)
8. Yanks 01 DS .241 .288 .355////Jeter .444 .474 .500
9. Yanks 00 WS .263 .353 .408////Jeter .409 .480 .864
10. Yanks 00 CS .279 .358 .417////Jeter .318 .464 .591
11. Yanks 00 DS .244 .310 .333////Jeter .211 .286 .211
12. Yanks 99 WS .270 .333 .416////Jeter .353 .389 .412
13. Yanks 99 CS .239 .309 .409////Jeter .350 .409 .550
14. Yanks 99 DS .235 .306 .378////Jeter .455 .538 .727
15. Yanks 98 WS .309 .396 .475////Jeter .353 .450 .353
16. Yanks 98 CS .218 .336 .330////Jeter .200 .259 .320
17. Yanks 98 DS .253 .299 .451////Jeter .111 .273 .111
18. Yanks 97 DS .259 .339 .410////Jeter .333 .417 .667
19. Yanks 96 WS .217 .308 .288////Jeter .250 .375 .250
20. Yanks 96 CS .273 .345 .497////Jeter .417 .417 .625
21. Yanks 96 DS .264 .327 .379////Jeter .412 .412 .471

Jeter's OPS has been higher than the team average in 15 of 21 post-season series, and 15 of 19 if you eliminate the 2001 ALCS and WS when he was obviously hurt badly. His recent performances suggest that his performances might properly be characterized as at least as good or better than his teammates (I am not saying that defines clutch, but it may be pointing in that direction at least):

Since the start of the 1999 ALDS, he has performed above his teammates in every series but the two in which he was injured and the 2000 ALDS vs. Oakland. That is 11 of 14 series and 11 of 12 in which he was not badly injured. You could argue that his OBP was relatively more important than slugging and extend the analysis to the 1998 WS where he slugged poorly but had a .450 OBP and led the team in hits and runs but I have not applied that method across the board.

Posted 1:47 p.m., October 31, 2003 (#8) - tangotiger
Comparing Jeter to his teammates is not enough. What you want is:

deltaJeter: Jeter post v Jeter regular
delatYanks: rest of Yanks post v rest of Yanks regular

Then, we can talk.

And, if you want to take out Jeter's injured series, go ahead.

Btw, didn't Giambi hit 4 HR this post-season? And wasn't his OPS near the top of the team as well?

Posted 3:48 p.m., October 31, 2003 (#9) - Scoriano
Btw, didn't Giambi hit 4 HR this post-season? And wasn't his OPS near the top of the team as well?

Yes, but in the reg season he was first, and in the post-season he was third. He also lost a game in part to his injury.

Posted 3:50 p.m., October 31, 2003 (#10) - Scoriano
Yanks '96 .796 Jeter .800
Yanks '97 .798 Jeter .775
Yanks '98 .822 Jeter .865
Yanks '99 .814 Jeter .889
Yanks '00 .804 Jeter .897
Yanks '01 .769 Jeter .857
Yanks '02 .809 Jeter .794
Yanks '03 .810 Jeter .844 Yanks PS .713 Jeter .856

Is the '03 analysis, where Jeter extends his positive delta compared to his teammates, the type of thing you are suggesting, Tango?

I don't have the db to back Jeter out of his teammates and to eliminate pitchers hitting from this, which I think might also be a good idea.

Posted 4:45 p.m., October 31, 2003 (#11) - Chuck Oliveros
I must say that I find reading about clutch hitting to be frustrating. The reason is that, when sabermetricians talk about clutch hitting, they're talking about something different than the general public. The sabermetrician, in effect, defines clutch hitting operationally. For example, a clutch hitter is one who performs better when runners are in scoring position in a close game or some such. However, that is not what is generally meant by clutch hitting. In general, when people speak of clutch performances, they mean rising to the occasion when the pressure's on. That means that the player must perceive the situation as clutch, and we frankly don't have any way of knowing when a player perceives it that way. For example, let's say hitting well with the score close late in the game is used as a measure of clutch hitting. Consider the following two situations. It's the final game of the season and the winner goes to the playoffs. The home team is down by a run. It's the bottom of the ninth and there's a runner on second. This is undoubtedly a clutch situation and the guy coming to the plate will certainly see it as such. However, if you have the same situation and the home team has already locked up a spot in the playoffs and the game means nothing, then I doubt that the player is going to perceive that as a clutch situation.

What I'm getting to is this. We can't really say anything about the existence or non-existence of some personal ability to perform in so-called clutch or pressure situations, and we have a limited ability to say something about performance in situations that may be clutch situations.

Posted 11:07 a.m., November 1, 2003 (#12) - Scoriano
Yanks '96 .796 Jeter .800 Yanks DS .706 Jeter .883 relative delta improves significantly
Yanks '96 .796 Jeter .800 Yanks CS .842 Jeter 1.042 relative delta improves significantly
Yanks '96 .796 Jeter .800 Yanks WS .596 Jeter .625 relative delta improves moderately
Yanks '97 .798 Jeter .775 Yanks DS .749 Jeter 1.084 relative delta improves significantly
Yanks '98 .822 Jeter .865 Yanks DS .750 Jeter .384 relative delta declines significantly
Yanks '98 .822 Jeter .865 Yanks CS .666 Jeter .579 relative delta declines significantly
Yanks '98 .822 Jeter .865 Yanks WS .871 Jeter .803 relative delta declines significantly**
Yanks '99 .814 Jeter .889 Yanks DS .684 Jeter 1.263 relative delta improves significantly
Yanks '99 .814 Jeter .889 Yanks CS .718 Jeter .959 relative delta improves significantly
Yanks '99 .814 Jeter .889 Yanks WS .749 Jeter .801 relative delta declines moderately
Yanks '00 .804 Jeter .897 Yanks DS .643 Jeter .497 relative delta declines significantly
Yanks '00 .804 Jeter .897 Yanks CS .775 Jeter 1.055 relative delta improves significantly
Yanks '00 .804 Jeter .897 Yanks WS .761 Jeter 1.344 relative delta improves significantly
Yanks '01 .769 Jeter .857 Yanks PS .647 Jeter .566 Jeter relative delta declines significantly*
Yanks '02 .809 Jeter .794 Yanks PS .825 Jeter 1.431 Jeter relative delta improves significantly
Yanks '03 .810 Jeter .844 Yanks PS .713 Jeter .856 Jeter relative delta improves significantly

� Jeter injured for ALCS and WS. His ALDS OPS was .974 as compared to the Yanks .643. He was injured in Game 5 of that series, and was dreadful at the plate for the rest of the post-season.
� Jeter OBP was .450, and he led the team in hits and runs.

I don't know if this is or is not clutch, but on the whole, that is pretty damn impressive.

Posted 11:09 a.m., November 1, 2003 (#13) - Scoriano
The formatting toyed with my notes. The ** refers to the second bullet point note regarding Jeter's .450 OBP in the '98 WS. The * refers to the note regarding his 2001 injury.

[an error occurred while processing this directive] Posted 5:10 p.m., November 1, 2003 (#15) - Scoriano
I am personally not trying to define "clutch". However, I think what most people that refer to Jeter as a "clutch" player mean is that he has raised his level of play in some way in the playoffs. I think there is evidence that this is true on a relative basis to his teammates and that if a player is excelling relative to his teammates in so many post-season series, it is likely that he fits within the meaning of the word "clutch" as used by those people.

As for the implication by Gleeman et. al. that Jeter's situational hitting is not clutch, that may be so, I really don't know and I have not looked at his teammates in comparable situations and the caveat stated in post #11 is importatn to bear in mind, but the numbers are not contextualized, and the reader that refers to them with his own knowledge of what is a good regular season performance is actually misled. I think it is too easy to come to the conclusion stated by David Smyth that its all a media infatuation with the big play at the expense of the overall perrformance, a view that is almost certainly correct when it comes to Jeter's def

Posted 5:23 p.m., November 1, 2003 (#16) - Scoriano
Damn, I lost half the text of my post. In short, post-season numbers have to be contextualized because there appears to be so much good pitching. For example, the Yanks have frequently had lower offensive stats in the post-season than the regular season. I guess they could have choked but my guess is that the pitching is tougher, the matchups more manipulated by managers, more of the ABs are with good pitchers in the game, and thus the decline may also manifest itself in the supposedly "clutch situations". Gleeman's quoted numbers look bad for Jeter because we know they would stink in the regular season but you'd have to see his teammates PS-nubmers, too, to contextualize them properly. Unless you do that, the implication of the stated numbers may be misleading. Maybe they are not misleading, and Jeter has been subpar even accounting for the caveat stated above, but his overall performance in the playoffs remains praiseworthy in my view and we need to be sure that the correct rigor is applied to analyzing someone that seems to be such a lightning rod for people on all sides with varying prejudices.

Posted 11:18 p.m., November 1, 2003 (#17) - Tangotiger
# of PAs for Jeter would have been better, since your splits sometimes have multiple lines per year, and sometimes not.

Summarizing:
96: plus
97: plus
98: minus
99: plus
00: plus
01: minus
02: plus
03: plus

Pretty good overall.

Posted 7:46 p.m., November 4, 2003 (#18) - Scoriano
Cashman has discloseed that Jeter played in the '03 ALCS and WS with a ruptured tendon in his left thumb, that may heal with rest or require surgery. FWIW, I didn't notice a difference in his swing or approach to fielding balls.