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September 29, 2005

Crooked Numbers

Still Not Clutch

by James Click

As expected, last week’s discussion of clutch hitting generated more than the usual share of reader e-mail. BP readers, an intelligent group, pointed out a few problems with both the methodology and conclusions drawn from the data. Thus, this week will be a follow-up, taking those suggestions into account.

First, and most critically, when attempting to create an expected WINS total for each player, I used VORP. VORP is inappropriate here because it includes a positional adjustment. Thus, players who play at tougher positions will have similar VORP totals to those who play at easier positions and post poorer batting lines. As a result, players at positions like shortstop, second base and catcher were assigned higher expected WINS (PrjWINS) than their raw batting statistics would indicate, while those at positions like designated hitter, first base and the corner-outfield slots were in the opposite situation. Players at more difficult defensive positions were assigned lower “Clutch” totals than players at other positions because of this discrepancy. You can probably guess what’s wrong with this conclusion from the original article because of that:

“Adam Dunn usually finds himself on the wrong end of discussions of doing what it takes to win--cutting down on strikeouts and the like--but he’s among the league leaders on the clutch list. Perhaps even more surprising is the 16th-least clutch player in the major leagues, Derek Jeter.”

Dunn plays left field while Jeter plays shortstop, so while the two may have similar VORP totals--Jeter was at 60.1 while Dunn was at 55.3--Dunn’s raw batting statistics were superior to Jeter’s, thus their PrjWINS totals were incorrect.

To adjust for this oversight, we can simply substitute Marginal Lineup Value for VORP. MLV is one of the bases for VORP, but does not include any positional adjustment, just as WINS does not, either. The two stats make for a good match. In fact, the correlation between MLV and WINS is much higher than that of VORP and WINS, meaning we can place more confidence in the new PrjWINS.