Quote:
Originally Posted by NoOne
there's no such thing as clutch 
that doesn't exclude the possiblity that a person lets their nerves get to them. that's self-inflicted. no one is ever better than what they are.
law of independent results explains why sometimes it seems like someone is good in tougher situations. .but it's really just luck it happened in a small window of time.
http://research.sabr.org/journals/th...clutch-hitting |
This is a really, really old study and I'm almost positive that there's since been stuff that shows that there is apparently some effect for some hitters. It's much easier to see in other sports, granted - there's no question that some players are better at scoring in crunch time in the NBA, for example. The thing there is, this is due to measurable skills like the ability to create one's own shot off the dribble or a quick release on a jumper that separate a "clutch" shooter from a guy who can generate points collecting garbage or coming off of picks but who won't necessarily find those opportunities available when defenses are actively attempting to stop that player from scoring.
With baseball, there's the issue of what constitutes "clutch". Is it late inning pressure situations? Okay, sure. Those situations if memory serves *do* favor players who can get around on good fastballs and track breaking pitches better than mistake hitters (as well as, in turn, pitchers with good stuff and small platoon splits). If it's something like late inning pressure situations during the World Series, or key games in a pennant race, the sample sizes will never be high enough to measure whether there's more of an effect or not.
In game, I believe that Markus has said that some players get a small boost. It's not huge and generally not dissimilar to the effect you see where some hitters hit a certain pitcher really well - more for flavor than to be a thing you can exploit.