Statheadz, Bitches

Since I haven't thanked the Twins for Big Papi yet this week, allow me to do so in a roundabout fashion by bashing this post bashing Papi's clutchness. Now, I'm on board with you if you are going to argue that conventional baseball statistics don't prove the existence of some form of "clutch hitting" ability.

The problem is, when you write your anti-Ortiz screed, you probably don't want to run directly contrary to many of the points made in the book advertised at the top of your page. Especially when you are trying to make stathead arguments...

For example, Sussman makes the standard "lineup protection" argument:

Also, if the pitcher opts not to pitch to Ortiz, he'll have to answer to the next batter, Manny Ramirez, another extremely dangerous hitter. The timid closer has to pick his poison, and usually he chooses Ortiz over Manny plus a baserunner. Meanwhile, Pujols' backup hitter is Scott Rolen, another great .300 batter. But who instills more fear: Rolen or Ramirez?

If you swapped Pujols' and Ortiz's red uniforms, the clutch moments would be the same.

I'm not doubting the Great Pujols, but first of all that's an asinine counterfactual. Secondly, "Baseball Between the Numbers" specifically debunks the lineup protection canard. From two directions - first it notes that there are almost no situations when it makes statistical sense (and not just 'max runs sense,' but Herm Edwardsian 'win the game' sense) to "pitch around" somebody that occur in an actual game. And those situations which do occur all involve 2001-2004 Barry Bonds. Secondly, there are no demonstrable "protection effects" - hitters do not perform better with a better hitter hitting behind them - or at least there is no demonstrable effect of that nature.

And then there is the confusion of "what is clutch?"

And while Ortiz gets singled out as the greatest clutch hitter, Manny Ramirez is 16-for-44 (.364) with RISP and two out. The Mets' David Wright bats .368 (21-for-57) in those same situations. The Rangers' Hank Blalock is a stunning .400 (24-for-60) with more RBI than any of the aforementioned clutch hitters in those situations, but Blalock simply isn't a home run hitter.

And isn't it odd that clutch hitters seem to be synonymous with "hitting a walk-off home run?" Clutch should come in many forms. Blalock is living proof.

As far as it goes, RISP/2 out is a nice enough stat but A) small sample size, B) it counts runner on second with 2 down in the top of the first in a scoreless game the same as 2nd and 3rd, down one, in the bottom of the ninth. These are so obviously different that a metric which treats them equally is borderline useless.

Much better, I might suggest, is measuring performance as a change in the expected winning percentage before and after an at-bat. In a portion chapter from "BBTN" excerpted which was not reprinted by ESPN, it specifically discusses how Ortiz out-performed a generic hitter (with his raw stats) by, if I remember correctly, more than 7 wins. To put it another way, all other things being equal, if Papi distributed his very same performance in an average way, the Sawx would have been 7 games worse last year, missed the playoffs and not gotten swept by fat-ass Bobby Jenks.

All this is a rather long-winded way of saying that "BBTN" is a darn fine book - certainly a better presentation of the Baseball Prospectus approach than was the rather scattershot "Mind Game" - I've only covered a tiny bit of the content, which concern everything from Derek Jeter's overrated fielding (his nickname should be "PastADiving" since so many grounders are hit well...), Alex Rodriguez being overpayed (by a bunch, it turns out - though he came close to showing a profit for the Yankees last season) or whether a new stadium is 'worth it' for the public (answer? Hide your checkbooks, kids - a thunderous "no.")

All in all, a fine demonstration into just how far SABREmatics have come in breaking down the inner workings 0f the game of baseball.