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BPS · 04-24-2018, 07:42 PM

Some people do better in stressful situations than others do. Lots of empirical evidence supports this claim. The difference in performance in stressful situations is generally linked to come combination of biological, social, and psychological factors. It is also consistent with my observations.

It seems plausible, then, that some might be more likely to do better in stressful baseball situations than others do. Baseball players are human and not machines, and so they are affected by stress.

This might not be fancy thinking, but it is my starting point.

However, the outcome of an at bat has a high degree of randomness and even over a very long time randomness might overwhelm the clutch ability of a baseball hitter. That is, if batting average in a stressful situation is a function of batter skill, clutch ability, and randomness you have: BA(stressful) = F(skill, clutch ability, luck), where luck has a mean of zero but a very high variance.

Among the problems with using measures like batting average to determine clutch hitting ability is identifying who a potential clutch hitter is. For instance, someone might have a high BA(stressful) in a certain year, but this might be due to simple luck. Showing that such a player, in a later year, has a low BA(stressful) might only reveal luck abandoned him. It might say little about whether clutch hitting exists and/or is repeatable.

Let's say, however, you do have some (as yet unknown) way to determining who the clutch hitters are. That is, you know that player X has a positive clutch ability. However, luck might flop around so much that you can't tell, by looking at BA(stressful) of player X that the player actually is a clutch hitter! The variance of luck might be so high that luck cancels out (and achieves is mean value of zero) only with a very high number of at bats.

In principle, though, it might be possible to discover evidence that player X was a clutch hitter if you had enough at bats to consider. Perhaps 100,000 at bats when luck finally cancels out and you have revealed to you the existence of true clutch hitting.

Of course, the problem might be that clutch hitting is itself something that exists for only a relatively small time for certain players. Or, it might be that the level of the clutch hitting skill varies over time and might even disappear only to reappear.

So, clutching hitting skill might exists but might be hard, or perhaps impossible, to detect by simple investigation of batting averages. Yet if you think you have something that indicates someone might be a clutch hitter (although maybe this is only luck that makes this appear to be the case) it might make sense to use them in important at bats.

04-24-2018, 07:42 PM	#63
BPS All Star Reserve Join Date: May 2004 Posts: 722	Some people do better in stressful situations than others do. Lots of empirical evidence supports this claim. The difference in performance in stressful situations is generally linked to come combination of biological, social, and psychological factors. It is also consistent with my observations. It seems plausible, then, that some might be more likely to do better in stressful baseball situations than others do. Baseball players are human and not machines, and so they are affected by stress. This might not be fancy thinking, but it is my starting point. However, the outcome of an at bat has a high degree of randomness and even over a very long time randomness might overwhelm the clutch ability of a baseball hitter. That is, if batting average in a stressful situation is a function of batter skill, clutch ability, and randomness you have: BA(stressful) = F(skill, clutch ability, luck), where luck has a mean of zero but a very high variance. Among the problems with using measures like batting average to determine clutch hitting ability is identifying who a potential clutch hitter is. For instance, someone might have a high BA(stressful) in a certain year, but this might be due to simple luck. Showing that such a player, in a later year, has a low BA(stressful) might only reveal luck abandoned him. It might say little about whether clutch hitting exists and/or is repeatable. Let's say, however, you do have some (as yet unknown) way to determining who the clutch hitters are. That is, you know that player X has a positive clutch ability. However, luck might flop around so much that you can't tell, by looking at BA(stressful) of player X that the player actually is a clutch hitter! The variance of luck might be so high that luck cancels out (and achieves is mean value of zero) only with a very high number of at bats. In principle, though, it might be possible to discover evidence that player X was a clutch hitter if you had enough at bats to consider. Perhaps 100,000 at bats when luck finally cancels out and you have revealed to you the existence of true clutch hitting. Of course, the problem might be that clutch hitting is itself something that exists for only a relatively small time for certain players. Or, it might be that the level of the clutch hitting skill varies over time and might even disappear only to reappear. So, clutching hitting skill might exists but might be hard, or perhaps impossible, to detect by simple investigation of batting averages. Yet if you think you have something that indicates someone might be a clutch hitter (although maybe this is only luck that makes this appear to be the case) it might make sense to use them in important at bats.