Game 54, Orioles At Mariners
Bedard vs Guthrie, 7:10 pm.
Because any attempt to talk about anything other than Chone Figgins is immediately rejected, let’s just start off with Chone Figgins news – he’s not playing tonight, and Eric Wedge says he’s going to get a couple of days off. His performance last night obviously is a driving factor here, but more than that, I think anyone following this team can feel the level of vitriol rising towards Figgins, and it’s getting close to what is probably an unhealthy level of anger from a fanbase towards a player. If Figgins struck out a few more times tonight, he was going to hear it from the crowd, and I don’t know that it would be all that helpful for him or the team. The Mariners don’t need Figgins to be the new Bobby Ayala.
So, he gets a few days off and the crowd gets a few days to let their anger subside. It’s probably in everyone’s best interests.
Ichiro, RF
Ryan, SS
Smoak, 1B
Cust, DH
Gutierrez, CF
Kennedy, 2B
Olivo, C
Rodriguez, 3B
Peguero, LF
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Tonight’s comment thread world cloud says: “When he’s bigger than Smoak in the cloud, you know we hate the guy.”
Also, the Dan Patrick Show is really awful.
Re: Smallest crowd. Bring up Ackley now, and try different left field options until someone takes charge with good production both offensively and defensively. Third base by committee until someone wins that job as well. More wins will be more fun for all, and will sell more tickets…
Good win, M’s.
That’s probably the last piece of the puzzle towards making the playoffs!
Safeco felt like a library tonight đ I felt like I was doing half of the cheering.
I can smell first place…
mlathrop3
D’accord, my friend. Same wit took me for one once, until the green and gold of the A’s began to show through…
That’s not quite accurate. The sabermetric position is not that there are no clutch performances, but that clutch performance has never been proven to be a replicable skill. Inside every sabermetrician is a baseball fan who marvels at clutch performance. He (or, increasingly, she) then asks of the statistics questions. The statistics, to this point in time, have indicated that good performance in clutch situations (and two outs, bottom of the eighth, two on, down by two, is pretty damn clutch) is random. So we roll our eyes at every announcer telling us about Matt Wieters’ batting average in 2011 with runners in scoring position. But we don’t deny that Justin Smoak hit a clutch home run tonight. We just don’t think there’s any evidence that the next time Justin Smoak gets up in the same situation he’s more likely to hit one out then because he did tonight.
If there really was a player that was “clutch” — that year after year hit better in clutch situations (whatever definition you want to use) than he did in nonclutch situations — then the obvious question to that player would be why he doesn’t try to hit when it is a non clutch situation?
Take that, Pythagoras!
Perhaps “clutch” is connected to “focused”?
Taking into account:
1)
: this would seem to be the element behind “home field advantage” (easier with friendly fans), also why ultra loud football stadiums are the scene of more false starts/offsides calls (by players who have a lower “clutch” score)… Also see (in real world): Firefighters, Soldiers, EMT’s…
combined with:
2)
: aka what gets called a “killer instinct”, the ability to let circumstances around you dictate a need for increased attention to the details of your abilities… In baseball I think this gets talked about the MOST in regards to the “mental makeup” of a closer, aka Mariano Rivera. Also, perhaps as shown by Tiger Woods, Michael Jordon, Reggie Miller, Joe Montana… Also see: Brain Surgeons, Code Breakers, Astro Physicists, Snipers
both combined with:
C) Opportunity/Fate: simply put, the circumstance that allows the players with the above 2 abilities to be put in a position to make use of those skills, which appear to elevate their already considerable “natural abilities”/”god given talents”/”1000’s of hours spent shooting free throws, or in the batting cage, or throwing a football through a swinging tire at 50 ft”
There are obviously many more ticks and pieces to what might make up the “clutch” ability (a gene somewhere tied to ancient survival instincts? or, how adrenaline affects different people’s biology?), but I don’t think it is beyond definition, as much as simply “as yet” undefined.
I think it is more than simply coincidence that certain players in different sports have been known to perform at their highest level when it “most counts”. Baseball shows this trait less than other sports simply because the percentages of success are so low to begin with (winning 6 out of 10 games makes you the best team in the league, and a 35% success rate at the plate is MVP level), and the moments are less clearly defined as they happen, and present themselves differently than in other sports (you don’t know a ball is about to be hit a foot over the centerfield wall UNTIL the centerfielder brings it back, you don’t know Ichiro is about to throw out Terrence Long at 3rd base with an amazing throw UNTIL the hard single is hit to right, and Long rounds 3rd…)
Historic clutch baseball performances:
Kirk Gibson hobbled homer
Mr. October
Mariano Rivera (many times)
Dennis Eckersly (many times)
Edgar Martinez “The Double”
Justin Smoak 5/31/11
Paul-
Why isn’t driving your brand new Corvette on the 300th day you own it as mentally thrilling as the day you drive it off the lot? OH WAIT!!! A ball just rolled into the street… AHHH… Oh crap, with a little kid chasing after it… THERE YOU GO! A clutch driving moment just presented itself…
But seriously, I think in baseball asking someone to be at their peak level of performance all 600 AB’s during the season is unreasonable… Each player tries to find their level of peak performance that they can maintain over the course of an entire season, and tries to ride that sustained momentum as long as possible, and keep that momentum at its crest as long as possible. I think that’s why hitting streaks are such fascinating events in baseball when they get above 10 or 15 games. “How long can he keep this up!?”
Or maybe it’s similar to asking a marathon runner why he doesn’t just sprint the entire race? The muscles aren’t capable of that sort of relentless peaking… And, likewise, the mind fatigues too after being at peak awareness for extended periods of time. (As a recording engineer, I can attest to this first hand– try remaining focused and giving your complete attention to the same song for three 12 hour days straight… It’s almost a shell shock feeling at the end of the sessions… No matter how invigorating the song or the performances are. And you need recovery time afterwards. I certainly couldn’t do it non-stop from April 1st to October 1st…)
Those were individual events. None of those people dogged their non clutch performance over their career. (that’s a better way to think about it, than saying that none of them exhibited statistically validated clutch performance over their career).
This has nothing to do with whether any player exhibits clutch performance.
Go back and read breadbaker’s comment again, I think you have missed the point.
And, yet, that is exactly what players are asked to do.
Tell you what, go and find a clutch player. Define clutch any way you want (close score + late innings, or whatever) and then find a player who performed significantly better in those situations than in other situations for his career.
If you find one, you will be the first person to have done so, and you’ll be able to publish an amazing article.
Read his points. Think it’s relevant. Sorry.
The fact it isn’t replicable has as much to do with fate (the ball, the kid– chance to not kill him/her) as whether clutch can be quantified.
Think of “clutch” as a scale…
From low to high… the “clutch” factor.
A clutch driver saves the kid most of the time… The most clutch performer saves the kid the most. Others don’t save him nearly as often. (Poor kid).
I’m supposing “fate” is what staticians don’t appreciate about being “clutch”.
(Also: Dennis Eckersly and Mariano Rivera were not individual events… And exactly why is it that you’re claiming a single event can’t be “clutch” again?)
So you’re suggesting if Kirk Gibson was up in the 9th inning of a blowout loss to San Diego in the middle of May, his mistress and his wife were both at the game, he had to be at the dentist before 5pm (it was a day game), and the sun was reflecting off a window out beyond centerfield, his focus/desire/performance would/should be exactly the same as it was that October day by the Bay?
I think this is a funny conversation. I think clutch is real but I think its a little different than what the conversation is making it out to be.
There are players who crash and burn in high pressure moments. We all acknowledge these players exist I am sure. Then there are players who don’t crack under pressure but they love it. They want to be the player with the bat and despite stats or anything else you know you want that person in that situation over anyone else.
I think its harder to classify clutch in baseball only because its the nature of that game. In football was Joe Montana clutch or just lucky to have all those 4th Quarter comebacks?
Was John Elway clutch or just in the right place at the right time sort of thing?
Basketball it was easy to see I lived in Utah Micheal Jordan was cluth but Karl Malone was not he sucked in the last half of 4th quarters.
To say there are people that just don’t perform better in high pressure situations than others is just not true.
When my son pitched in Little League one year there was a coach who liked to yell “toes on the line!” to get his batters to crowd the plate. That was probably 4 years ago but I bet if you asked him what hearing “toes on the line” means he’d say “my next pitch goes inside” đ
The fact that no one has discovered this yet does not necessitate that it doesn’t exist.
Baseball specifically? How ’bout Cliff Lee’s playoff statistics, versus regular season? Some of us would call that “clutch”– though not 100% successful, so it depends on what YOU want “clutch” to mean, not how I try to define it. If you’re predisposed to believe it doesn’t exist, your sports life simply isn’t as “rich” as mine– whether I imagine it or not.
And I’m not trying to be adversarial, not at all, it’s more a matter of being perplexed. So you don’t enjoy (believe?) the poetry of the game? Justin Smoak’s at bat in the bottom of the eighth last night was just another at bat to you?
Did you see Vince Young beat USC almost single-handedly in the National Title game?
Michael Jordan’s 6 NBA Finals MVP awards?
Tiger Woods winning the Masters by 12 strokes? Golf is an amazingly difficult game to succeed at, and he has a 14-1 record when leading (or tied for the lead) going into the final round. 8-1 in Majors. That TO ME, is clutch.
Reggie Jackson’s 18 homeruns in the post season (10 in the world series, 3 in one game on consecutive pitches– 3 pitches, 3 HR’s in the WORLD SERIES) doesn’t ring some chord in your heart as an absurdly above average, “clutch” performance?
We probably just have different ideas what “clutch” actually means.
Perhaps you don’t agree with me that simply performing at any moment above and beyond what normal expectations would predict is the very definition of “clutch”, although certain events and circumstances have to be in place to elevate the moment to a level where “clutch” applies?
I mean, almost BY definition, if you could sustain that sort of performance it wouldn’t be “clutch” at all, it would be ordinary by that person’s standards, yeah?
I think it is more than simply coincidence that certain players in different sports have been known to perform at their highest level when it âmost countsâ.
This is correct, but not for the reasons you think it is. The passive construction of “have been known” is important here–they become “known” to be clutch because the media loves to talk about this sort of thing. The “more than coincidence” you speak of is “media narrative,” but it doesn’t have a sound factual or analytic basis.
Most of what you’re arguing takes the form of a narrative about why it makes sense, psychologically, that clutchiness might exist. I see no point in arguing with that, because it’s been shown, repeatedly, that it’s not a replicable skill. Define “high leverage” however you like, and identify a bunch of players that were “clutch” under your definition. It turns out this has no predictive value for future clutchiness.
Some outcomes of human activity are the product of random chance, and some are the product of a unique skill (in this case, hypothesized as a psychological skill). The single best way we have to distinguish the two is to determine whether the outcomes form a predictable and stable pattern. Most baseball skills–generating swinging strikes or ground balls, drawing walks, hitting for power, etc., clearly and obviously do. Elevating your baseline skill set in clutch situations does not. All the pyschological explanations for how clutchiness might work (if it did exist) don’t change that.
If human pyschology is at work here, it’s the propensity of humans to interpret random events via coherent narratives, which explains as well as anything why “clutchiness” is so widely assumed to be real.
If youâre predisposed to believe it doesnât exist, your sports life simply isnât as ârichâ as mineâ whether I imagine it or not.
And Iâm not trying to be adversarial, not at all, itâs more a matter of being perplexed. So you donât enjoy (believe?) the poetry of the game? Justin Smoakâs at bat in the bottom of the eighth last night was just another at bat to you?
Please explain how believing Justin Smoak’s home run was the product of a good hitter with fortuitous timing, rather than the product of a special ability to elevate above and beyond his baseline skill set at certain, select moments would somehow diminish my ability to enjoy the moment. (For the record, I can assure you it doesn’t. A reality-based conception of how baseball works has enhanced my enjoyment of the game, rather than diminished it.)
Hey Paul-
Sorry. Yep, I blew it… As the Sumatra started to work I realized what you said was an extrapolation of an angle of Breadbaker’s comment– when intitially I was responding to just your comment without recognizing what you were pinpointing. Even AFTER you tried to point me there. But, slowly the caffeine has caused the bullseye to move back to the center of the target, so I could then realize how far I missed it (might be time for new prescriptions).
Actually reminds me of a joke that makes light of statistical relevance:
3 Statisticians go hunting and come upon a 6 point buck a couple hundred yards away… First guy shoots and misses 3 feet to the left… “Damn!” The deer nonchalantly looks to the left where the bullet passed, then goes back to munching grass… The second guy shoots and misses too, the exact same distance to the right… “Damn!”
The 3rd statistician, ever vigilant to his craft, jumps up and down excitedly yelling “WE HIT IT! WE HIT IT!”
Anyone who has played competitive sports at a fairly high level (I played college basketball) knows that some people perform better under pressure than others. I doubt you could find an athlete or coach who believes otherwise.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that these people suddenly elevate their skills during “clutch” situations but rather they are able to maintain focus and play at a high level while under intense pressure while others do not. It flies in the face of human nature to believe that pressure doesn’t affect people in different ways, especially at the level that elite athletes must perform.
rsrobinson-
Agreed, but this concept is what I initially failed to realize was NOT what Paul/DJW/Breadbaker were referencing.
It takes YEARS to develop the type of concentration and focus it takes to perform during 4th and 1 of the Super Bowl with :03 seconds on the clock, down by 5, at the 2 yard line. The average person couldn’t. This IS a psychological skill, practiced and perfected as much as any physical skill, by endless repetition– and likewise which some will be able to develop, and others not so much. Or the ability to make the game winning free throws while down by 1, standing at the line, watching opposing fans through the clear acrylic backboard do their most to distract you, with :01 on the clock. The opposing coach calling back to back timeouts just as you’re about to shoot…
Successful people might be termed “clutch” in these moments, but it was always part of their skillset (and moreso perhaps than their surrounding teammates), not some mysterious new ability that only appears in those key moments.
I don’t think folks are necessarily disagreeing here as much as describing different events: (mental acumen as a player-to-player varying skill -vs- a reliable repeatable physical act dependent on circumstance– ie, this ability is ALREADY a part of certain players skillset and not something that just shows up and extends above their common abilities at key moments)
Is this the idea, guys? (I might still be way off– who knows? Definitely not me. I’m far from clutch in intellectual moments *laugh*)
not really đ All do you gotta do is punch it in. Back to basics. Heck, back to pee wee football. đ
One last comment, on this statement:
No, but since many people have looked, over many years, using many different methods, means that it really is highly likely that it doesn’t exist.
rsrobinson also just summed up a major part of it quite well.
Sure, sometimes players do great things in an important situation (like Smoak last night). And when it happens, we’re happy.
I think you are right in the discussion. I am also not saying that the player elevates their skill-set in the particular moment more that they can still maintain top form during high pressure moments.
Like rsrobinson said athletes that played at higher levels know this. I played semi-pro tennis and you knew when players couldn’t handle the pressure.
So I can agree that this is not a new skill-set that arises in that moment. But I cannot agree that clutch players don’t exist.
One of the most pressure packed situations in all of sports is shooting free throws at the end of a close game. Play stops, the player is alone on the line, and everyone in the building is watching him and how he performs. An elite basketball player spends years developing free throw shooting skills so, if I’m understanding the sabermetrics argument correctly, he should continue to shoot at his normal free throw percentage in this situation. Makes and misses are simply a product of small sample statistical variations and, if given enough opportunities, the player would shoot his normal percentage during these pressure-packed situations.
Sorry, but I’ve seen enough good free throw shooters pull the string on a clutch free throw to believe this. Clutch free throw shooters may not always make the free throw but they maintain their normal shooting form while others noticeably tighten up and do not. I find it hard to believe that this would be the case in basketball and not in baseball.
100% agree rsrobinson this I have to believe is true in all sports.
Playing high level tennis and being in a 5th set tie break and serving to win the match I have seen players completely blow up and lose. While others can handle the pressure and win.
Its more the fact that clutch players maintain their level of skills in that situation rather than crumble under the pressure.
I never meant to say that a player turns into a player he is not during those situations cause I also don’t believe that is true either.
To put my OWN thoughts in context:
I too was a “semi-professional” athlete at one time, although in an individual rather than team sport, which presents a much more “controllable” environment (junior-olympics trapshooter).
So, using my own perspective, I was remembering the idea of “being clutch” when you were down to your last 10 birds, of a perfect round, and the nerves and resolve it took to finish a perfect 100. OR, the sense of failure you could experience if you “choked” and short shot the 96th, 97th, or GOD forbid the 100th target (been there, done that).
Also, that’s why I was relating it to focus– because “pumping yourself up”, getting “in the zone”, all that psychological stuff is really just ways to pinpoint and articulate your focus, to the extreme. Routines, superstition, bouncing the ball 3 times before a free throw attempt (Jordan’s tongue sticking out?), all that stuff is a way of confirming for yourself you are repeating steps that were successful once before…
I used to sing songs in my head, something that would keep my adrenaline level going, and yell “pull” at the same point in the phrase each time.
Call it what you want, if it works more times than it doesn’t, I thought it was a key to being “clutch”, and getting through a round unscathed.
Kirk Gibson hobbled homerMr. October
Mariano Rivera (many times)
Dennis Eckersly (many times)
Edgar Martinez âThe Doubleâ
Justin Smoak 5/31/11
So was Eckersly “not clutch” in giving up the HR to Gibson?
Clutch doesn’t mean you are perfect. That is not what anyone is saying.
I just found it interesting that Gibson and Eckersly were listed together.
I also find it interesting that really good players are “clutch”.
Usually when people talk about “clutch” they’re talking about players who supposedly elevate their game – they are perceived to perform better when the pressure is on. In baseball that’s fairly easy to quantify, has been studied, and has demonstrably been shown not to be a repeatable skill from year to year.
What you seem to be saying, though, is more in line with what I believe. There are players that are able to maintain their focus and continue to perform at their expected high level even when the pressure is on. Then there are other players who, one way or another, let the pressure of the moment affect their concentration, which deleteriously impacts their performance. So while I don’t believe in “clutch”, I do believe in “anti-clutch” – Jose Mesa when he was with the Mariners, for example. đ
I find it funny that some people think there are professional athletes who apparently are so good they don’t normally need to be performing at their best to keep their jobs. Because, basically, that’s what the arguments about “clutch” boil down to – a guy who apparently can just phone it in most of the time because he’s so amazingly skilled, then he can just turn it on at will when it really matters.
Westside,
I think the mistake is thinking that particular behavior is a purposeful, conscious decision– because it absolutely happens.
Perhaps we can define “clutchiness” as a DEFICIENCY, not an attribute… ie, Guys who DON’T perform their best against inferior opponents, or in lame conditions, which would seem to imply the inverse, that they perform their best when challenged and in the limelight. (“Ego” say hello to your ideal home– the professional athlete!)
Afterall, isn’t this what we call an “upset”, or why half the world watches the NCAA tournament?
Or when we say a team “played down to their competition”?
Rulon Gardner defeats Alexander Karelin (Karelin phoned it in?)
Valparaiso beats #3 Mississippi (Miss didn’t want to win it all that year, for some reason?)
US Hockey Team beats Russia to advance to the gold medal round (Russia wasn’t interested that day?)…
Or lest we forget, Randy Johnson the 1st half of his final Mariner’s season, and the Randy Johnson newly acquired by the Astros? (I don’t suppose he was phoning it in, but he certainly performed more poorly in a situation he wasn’t happy with…)
To think that professional athletes somehow are NOT affected by circumstances, or are able to maintain an exacting level of performance at all times, is to lean in the opposite wrong direction, in my mind. And equally funny.
Again, I propose it boils down to one’s ability to focus, which varies from player to player. Some folks take more dramatic circumstances to elevate their focus to its greatest level. While some folks LOSE some of their focus when extenuating circumstances arise, and their focus peaks under different conditions…
Heck, if that WASN’T the situation, wouldn’t we all be Felix Hernandez? Tiger Woods? Barry Saunders?
(Actually, Tiger is perhaps exhibit A: Tiger BEFORE the sex addict revelations, and Tiger with that baggage dragging around his neck…)
Actually, there’s a lot of selective memory going on too. My favorite example (because it came up so often), is Jeter getting dubbed “Mr. November” because he hit that walk-off game winner in Game 4 of the 2001 WS in the wee hours of November 1. Totally clutch, right? But over the rest of the WS games played that Novemeber, he went 3 for 12, which is worse than his career average. So is he “Captain Clutch” for the one at-bat that everybody remembers, or is he “anti-clutch” for all the failed at-bats everybody forgets? Or maybe he’s a career ~.300 hitter who can be expected to do about the same in high-leverage situations, but the hits in those situations loom larger in our memory.
This is especially true for batters because their failures are rarely memorable — they’re just one out of three in that inning, after all — but key hits usually are. Closers are kind of the reverse for the same reason — League leads the AL in saves, but the ones we remember are those blown ones in Baltimore; Mariano Rivera gets saves all the time but I’ll always remember him giving up the hit to Luis Gonzalez in Game 7 of that 2001 WS, or the walk-off he gave up to Ichiro, or the one he gave up to Kennedy last week. The numbers say he’s the furthest thing from the definition of “anti-clutch” but that’s sure not how my mental highlight reel plays out.
BTW, there have been various attempts to quantify “clutch.” Check out this list. You might see some surprises. A.J. Pierzynski? Juan Pierre? Bill Hall? (And note #8, and the guys near the bottom).
I imagine there isn’t anyone – including you – who believes every player is equally talented. So obviously this strawman falls apart right there.