“There's nothing I can do about it.”

Is "clutch hitting" a thing?

The story has essentially attained the level of holy writ, at least among those committed to data and evidence, such that it now seems almost too good to be true – perhaps even romantic.

The quick-and-dirty version of the tale is that stats geeks with computers, like those the late former player and broadcaster Tim McCarver called “drooling eggheads,” outsmarted and outmaneuvered the stupid yet arrogant “traditional baseball men” who ran our most traditional sport and who thought they knew all there was to know about the game. Thus, it is said, everything the old-time baseball men thought they knew about evaluating players and teams has been weighed, measured, and found wanting.

“Welcome to the New World.”

This revolution – as remarkable as it has been comprehensive, now extending to all sports – is said to have brought about the ultimate revenge of the nerds. Today, MLB general managers and executives don’t look like the baseball men of yesteryear. They look like investment bankers in chinos. Some even used to be investment bankers. The geeks now run the baseball show, having moved the level of analytical precision involved in running teams and evaluating players from zero-to-sixty, seemingly in about half an inning.

The new breed of “baseball men” aren’t grizzled scouts looking for “five tool guys” but, rather, Ivy League educated experts in computer modelling and statistical analysis who use those skills to determine who to scout, who to sign, who to play, and how to play. The prevailing narrative describes this new contingent as dominating professional baseball at every level, down to the depths of the independent minor leagues.

Is the analytics overhaul of baseball proper as complete and comprehensive as the telling claims? No. The real story is much more interesting and enlightening than that.

Baseball is particularly amenable to the use of statistical analysis because it offers large sample sizes, discrete individual-performance measures (such as plate appearances, pitches, and the like), and ease of identifying positive results (such as winning, home runs, and more). However, when humans are involved – and baseball is as human as can be – interpretation of the underlying data is highly complicated … and sometimes harder than that.

A great interpretation of a difficult data set, especially one involving human behavior, involves more sculpting than tracing. It requires great skill, imagination, and even a bit of whimsy as well as collaboration as to whether the various interpretive choices are acceptable (not to say the right) ones. That’s why we understand reality better with respect to the natural sciences than in the social sciences. As ever, information is cheap but meaning is expensive.

That said, it turns out that the new baseball men are as human as the old baseball men. They have made many an arrogant an erroneous call (such as, for example, claiming for a long time, contrary to the traditionalists, that pitch-framing wasn’t really a thing). Moreover, they haven’t “solved” baseball. Many controversies remain and much remains to be discovered. This week’s TBL will look at one of those controversies.

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Since it was my birthday earlier this week, You might want to check out my personal origin story, featuring birthday luck: Rhyming Set to Music. Since that TBL came out several thousand subscribers ago, many of you may not have seen it. Three other TBLs I’m particularly proud of are also linked below.

• The Index Mindset

• Words to Live By

• Addition by Subtraction

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Thanks for reading.

“There's nothing I can do about it.”

My first baseball memory is from October 16, 1962, the day after my sixth birthday, by which time I was already hopelessly hooked on what was then the National Pastime. In those days, all World Series games were played during the day. Happily for me, at home in western New York, the game was played in California, which meant the time difference worked in my favor. So, I hurried home from school on that Tuesday afternoon¹ to turn on our (black-and-white) television to watch the seventh and deciding game of a great Series at the then-new Candlestick Park in San Francisco between the homestanding Giants and the New York Yankees.

Game seven matched New York’s 23-game winner, Ralph Terry (who in 1960 had given up perhaps the most famous home run in World Series history to lose the climatic seventh game), against San Francisco’s 24-game-winner, Jack Sanford. Sanford had pitched a three-hit shutout against Terry in game two, winning 2-0, while Terry had returned the favor in game five, defeating Sanford in a 5-3, complete game win. 

Game seven² was brilliantly pitched on both sides. While Terry carried a perfect game into the sixth inning (broken up by Sanford) and a two-hit shutout into the ninth, Sanford was almost as good. The Yankees pushed their only run across in the fifth on singles by Bill “Moose” Skowron and Clete Boyer, a walk to Terry and a double-play grounder by Tony Kubek.

When Terry took the mound for the bottom of the ninth, clinging to that 1-0 lead (the idea of a “closer” had not been concocted yet), he faced pinch-hitter Matty Alou, who drag-bunted his way aboard. His brother Felipe Alou and Chuck Hiller struck out, bringing the future Hall-of-Famer, Willie Mays, probably the greatest player of all-time, to the plate. The Say-Hey Kid had led the National League in batting, runs, and homers that year, as the Giants’ sought desperately to stay alive. Mays doubled to right, but Roger Maris (who had famously hit 61 homers the year before and who was a better fielder than is commonly assumed) cut the ball off at the line. His quick throw to Bobby Richardson and Richardson’s relay home forced Alou to hold at third base.

With first base open, Giants cleanup hitter and future Hall-of-Famer Willie McCovey stepped into the batter’s box while another future Hall-of-Famer, Orlando Cepeda, waited on deck. Yankees Manager Ralph Houk decided to let the right-handed Terry pitch to the left-handed-hitting McCovey, who had tripled in his previous at-bat and homered off Terry in game two, even though Cepeda was a right-handed hitter who had struck out in two earlier at-bats.

After the first pitch to McCovey, Richardson moved to his left. McCovey had pulled a long foul ball on the prior pitch and Richardson expected Terry to throw a curveball, which McCovey would pull again. Still, Richardson played McCovey much more in the middle of the diamond than National League infielders. “Every second baseman played me in the hole toward first, because I was a dead pull hitter,” McCovey said. “If I hit a ball to where Richardson happened to be standing that day, 99 times out of 100 it would be a hit.” McCovey got an inside fastball. He rifled a blistering shot toward right field but low and just a step to Richardson’s left. The second baseman snagged it and the World Series was over.

“I guess if I’d known where National League second basemen played Willie, I’d probably have been much closer to first base – and I’d never have caught that ball,” Richardson said later.

McCovey would later say that it was the hardest he had ever hit a ball.

“It was an instant thing, a bam-bam type of play,” recalled Tom Haller, who caught the game for the Giants. “A bunch of us jumped up like, ‘There it is,’ then sat down because it was over.

“It was one of those split-second things. ‘Yeah! No!’”

About 45 years later, when Richardson saw McCovey for the first time since 1962, Willie said to him: “I bet your hand still hurts.”

Hall-of-Famer Yogi Berra, who has pretty much seen it all, said, “When McCovey hit the ball, it lifted me right out of my shoes. I never saw a last game of a World Series more exciting.”

Had McCovey’s frozen rope been hit just a bit higher or just a bit to either side, the Giants would have been crowned champions. As recounted by Henry Schulman in the San Francisco Chronicle, it was a matter of “[f]ive stinkin’ feet.”

The creator of Peanuts thought it wasn’t that much. Charles M. Schulz lived in northern California and was a passionate Giants fan. In a Peanuts comic strip, in December 1962, Schulz depicted Charlie Brown sitting glumly with Linus, without a word spoken in the first three panels. In the last panel, Charlie Brown simply shouts into the abyss...

“Why couldn’t McCovey have hit the ball just three feet higher?”

Schultz returned to this theme in another Peanuts strip about a month later. This one featured a nearly identical scene except, in the last panel, Charlie Brown moans ...

“Or, why couldn’t McCovey have hit the ball even two feet higher?”

Despite a Hall of Fame career that spanned another two decades and included over 500 home runs, McCovey never won a World Series championship. And, despite doing everything right during that at bat (and the Yankees making multiple mistakes), Willie is remembered for making the last out of a World Series.

The 2001 World Series was delayed by 9.11. When it finally arrived, it featured the New York Yankees, seeking their fifth consecutive title, and the Arizona Diamondbacks. I saw game seven with my family in a hotel room on a college trip in San Antonio, Texas.

Future Hall-of-Famer Mariano Rivera, probably the best closer ever, came out for the bottom of the ninth inning looking to save one of the greatest baseball games ever played in one of the greatest World Series we’ll ever see.

To that point, the Sandman had not lost in 51 career playoff appearances. He once pitched a record 34 1/3 consecutive scoreless postseason innings. He was on a streak of 23 straight postseason save chances converted. He had allowed only one earned run in 15 2/3 innings during the 2001 playoffs.

However, a hit, an error, and an RBI double tied the score. A walk loaded the bases, bringing Luis Gonzalez to the plate. Gonzalez hit .325 with 57 home runs in a magical regular season, but struggled mightily throughout the Series, with 11 strikeouts in 24 at-bats.

In a similar situation in Game 5, in the 11th inning, Yankees manager Joe Torre played the infield at double-play depth, allowing second baseman Alfonso Soriano to snare Reggie Sanders’ bases-loaded line drive. This time, Torre pulled his infield in to try to cut the potential winning run down at the plate.

Hitless in four at-bats in the game to that point, with two strikeouts, Gonzalez weakly fouled off the first pitch he saw – a fastball down the middle. Prior to the second pitch, television analyst Tim McCarver made a remarkable observation.

“The one problem is Rivera throws inside to left-handers, and left-handers get a lot of broken-bat hits into…the shallow part of the outfield. That’s the danger of bringing the infield in with a guy like Rivera on the mound.”

The next pitch was a classic cutter from Rivera, well-located near the top inside half of the strike zone where the hitter cannot hope to drive it. Indeed, the pitch broke Gonzo’s bat. But, with the infield in, all Gonzalez needed was soft contact. And that’s what he got, fulfilling McCarver’s warning. He lifted a flare barely onto the outfield grass, driving in the winning run and causing bedlam at the Arizona ballpark.

Arizona became MLB champions, the first team in World Series history to enter the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 behind to then rally to win without extra innings.

Gonzalez was a World Series hero, even though Derek Jeter probably catches the ball if he is positioned at double-play depth.

Rivera trudged to his dugout, a postseason loser for the first time. “That’s baseball,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

McCovey’s failure and Gonzalez’s success (in outcome, if not in process) highlights why determining if “clutch hitting” is a real thing is so problematic.³

As I write this TBL, Bryce Harper is tearing up *this* postseason. His gaudy numbers make him one of the best postseason hitters of all-time. As Bryson Stott said about Harper’s growing October legacy, “He’s just one of those guys where it feels like any time you need a run, you need a hit, you need a home run, he’s always up. And then he always does what he’s supposed to do.”

Indeed, Harper hit better than every other MLB hitter this year in high leverage situations. And, last season, he sent my Padres home and his Phillies to the World Series by launching a Robert Suarez 99-mph fastball over the left-field wall at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.

That sounds clutch.

However, Harper was 52nd in that category last year and 176th (out of 188) in 2021. He hit .130 in his first postseason (2012), .235 in 2016, and .211 in the 2017 playoffs.

“Clutch” seems not to be a repeatable skill and there is no evidence — to this point, at least — that any player is particularly clutch ( see here, here, here, here, and here). Thus, Hall of Famer Derek Jeter produced a .310/.377/.440 slash line for his career in the regular season (119 wRC+); in the postseason: .308/.374/.465 (121 wRC+); Hall of Famer David Ortiz produced a .286/.380/.552 slash line in the regular season (140 wRC+); in the postseason: .289/.404/.543 (144 wRC+); and the legendary Babe Ruth produced a .342/.472/.690 (197 wRC+) regular season slash line; in the postseason: .326/.467/.744 (200 wRC+).

Maybe more and better data will allow us to demonstrate that clutch hitting exists. Maybe anybody who wasn’t able to perform in the clutch was weeded out in the minor leagues. And maybe what we think of as clutch is merely the ability to keep oneself from choking under pressure.

Leave it to a stats guy, Dayn Perry, to offer up a great description of the ideal marriage between sabermetrics and traditional thinking (which works well beyond baseball).

“A question that’s sometimes posed goes something like this: ‘Should you run an organization with scouts or statistics?’ My answer is the same [as] it would be if someone asked me: ‘Beer or tacos?’ Both, you fool. Why construct an either/or scenario where none need exist?”

Happily, in many places today, both sides are increasingly getting along. “If you ask all the nerds in all the front offices, there’s a lot of respect for what people who played the game know about this stuff,” Sam Miller said. The analytics types deserve respect, too, even when — as in clutch hitting — they can’t come up with a good answer.

Totally Worth It

In 2015, residents in Woodland, N.C. expressed concern that a proposed solar farm would consume too much sunlight. One resident told the town council that the farm would steal sunlight that plants need, while another warned that it might “suck up all the energy from the sun.”

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Benediction

Bach was amazing. Mahler said that “in Bach the vital cells of music are united as the world is in God.” He, that most devout of composers, gave us music so sublime that it is often cited as evidence of God’s existence.

My favorite of Bach’s hymns provides this week’s benediction.

We are all broken in some way or another and wildly prone to screw things up. W. H. Auden got it right.

O stand, stand at the window | As the tears scald and start; | You shall love your crooked neighbour | With your crooked heart.

We live on “a hurtling planet,” the poet Rod Jellema informed us, “swung from a thread of light and saved by nothing but grace.”

This week’s blessing is the most famous of them all, from Numbers 6:24-26.

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

To those of us prone to wander, to those who are broken, to those who flee and fight in fear – which is every last lost one of us – there is a faith that offers grace and hope. And may love have the last word. Now and forever. Amen.

As always, thanks for reading.

Issue 156 (October 20, 2023)

1. In those days, even as a first-grader, I walked to school without adults (albeit with friends). Most parents today think that idea is insane.

2. You can listen to the radio broadcast of the entire game here.

3. It remains unclear how the term “clutch” was derived. Perhaps it was influenced by “Invictus,” in which English poet William Ernest Henley wrote, “In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud.”