re bases loaded walk gives reds win in in article mssc y u dn netcom com mss netcom com mark singer writes actually i think the large scale sample size is part of the problem it seems to me that if we were to plot all the players in baseball in regard to ba vs clutch ba deviation we would get some kind of bell curve the x axis being the deviation in clutch hitting vs non clutch the y axis being the number of players certainly there would be some players on the extreme ends of the bell right most definitely my supposition is that if we were to find the same players consistently year after year at one end of the bell or the other then we might be able to make some reasonable conclusions about those players as opposed to all baseball players this may be the root of the confusion please consider the following hypothetical with an open mind note that i am not yet saying that it has anything to do with the question at hand suppose we have a simplified lotto game you pick a number from and win if that number is drawn suppose we have a large population of people who play this game every week in the first year of the game approximately of the population will win or more times in the second year of the game of those time winners will again be time winners in the third year of the game of those who won or more times in each of the first two years will win again suppose i started with people in my population after three years i have people who have consistently in each of the last three years won or more the number of times expected do we expect them to be big winners in the fourth year of the game no because we know there is no skill involved nothing about these consistent winners can influence their chances of winning but suppose we don t know whether or not there is a chance that skill might be involved perhaps some of the people in our population are psychic or something how would we test this hypothesis we can look for correlations in the population now most of the population will show zero correlation but our psychics should show a high positive correlation even if they aren t very good psychics they should still manage to win or more times most years net result a small positive correlation over the entire population this probably brings us to the heart of the disagreement i am having with others on this topic must any conclusion based on statistical history be able to be applied broadly throughout a data base before it has any validity is it impossible or irrational to apply statistical analysis to selected components of the data base well zero correlation is zero correlation you mention that sabo has hit poorly in the clutch over the last years but if we look at the past we find that clutch patterns are just as likely to reverse as they are to remain consistent the length of the streak doesn t seem to make a difference to the probability that the player will be clutch or choke the next year is there any reason to expect this streak to be different from past streaks now if it were true that of all three year streaks remained true to form then we might have something useful but then we wouldn t have zero correlation instead we have of all three year streaks remain true to form and of all three year streaks reverse you look at those numbers and say three year choke streak implies more likely to choke this year but it would be equally valid to look at those numbers and say three year choke streak implies more likely to be clutch this year since the probabilities are split each way i completely accept that reasoning again what if we were to find the same individuals at each end of the spectrum on a consistent basis then we would have something useful and we would also have a positive correlation but for every individual that exhibits such a pattern and holds true there is another who exhibits such a pattern and then reverses cheers valentine
