re bases loaded walk gives reds win in redreport in article mssc w g netcom com mark singer writes in article c vhlh idz usenet ucs indiana edu rstimets silver ucs indiana edu robert and stimets writes in a game that saw a little of everything incredible defense some power clutch pitching and a little wildness the reds managed to overcome their trademark lack of timely hitting in crucial situations during spring training i made a similarly innoncent looking comment about clutch hitting on this bb and the flames were flying no such thing as clutch hitting they the sdcn s all screamed i assumed they also meant there was no such thing as any kind of clutch performance given their comments this is certainly not the case there is no significant ability toi perform in the clutch but clutch performance certainly happens every time there is a game winning hit the clutch pitching quoted above is something which happened not a claim that any particular player should be expected to be a clutch pitcher over the past four seasons sabo has had hits in abs defined as clutch situations by the scouting report for an average of over that same period he had another abs with hits for an average of according to the rest of the sdcn s any differential such as this is completely and totally random and cannot be used for any reasonable inference such as perhaps perez should have used a pinch hitter in that situation simple statistics tell me that there is a chance an average clutch hitter would have this large a split the average decrease is points standard deviation about there will be such hitters in any league just as there will be hitters who hit poorly on tuesdays and there is only a very weak correlation in my best study between clutch hitting in the last four years and clutch hitting this year probably because most of the clutch data is determinaed by luck rather than any ability based only on this data i don t see any reason to pinch hit for sabo or any other player who had been a poor clutch hitter in the past but there are many other factors involved in a decision to pinch hit does the pinch hitter give you a platoon advantage any portion of sabo s clutch split that results from his platoon split is certainly a real ability even if it has nothing to do with clutch hitting do you have a singles hitter at the plate when you need a home run do you have a curveball pitcher facing a batter who has trouble with curves david grabiner grabiner zariski harvard edu we are sorry but the number you have dialed is imaginary please rotate your phone degrees and try again disclaimer i speak for no one and no one speaks for me
