you had me at statistics :0

Interesting, Patrick. I didn't know that's where you fell on the subject, but I can see where you're coming from.

I guess it's going to depend on how you define clutch, and there are certainly ways of looking at it that we haven't (or can't) yet. Personally, though, while I agree that it is repeatable in some sense, I think when we can study it further, the effects of it are going to be relatively small. As a starting point to those new to the subject, I'd check out this article by Tom Tango: http://www.tangotiger.net/clutch.html

Regardless, it certainly isn't something watching a bunch of games - even all of them for an entire season - will be able to tell you.

right, they only measure what they measure. batting average only measures hits per at-bat. it is making a "qualitative" judgment from this "quantitative" number that gives rise to the problem.

or, even worse, taking this "current quantitative" stat and trying to predict a "future qualitative" state from it. THIS is what people do that is flawed, and why their view of stats becomes dim.

derek, i think that clutch hitting may be a repeatable skill. we just cannot tell right now with the limited tools we have. to take any side of the "clutch" debate other than the "agnostic" one seems unreasonable to me.

Statistics are simply a factual record of what actually occurred on the field. They are only flawed if you don't understand how to interpret the stat or what its use is. For example, batting average isn't "flawed", it just doesn't measure a batter's overall value at the plate very well.

There are definitely aspects of the game that stats typically haven't quantified and definitely affect the game, such as base running. But these things have such minimal effect that ignoring them really won't change a player's value. Looking strictly at the stats takes us so close to a player's actual value, it's just not worth worrying about the non-quantifiable things.

Scratch that first paragraph about clutch not being important. Poorly worded. Rather, clutch isn't a repeatable skill, in essence. The repeatable portion of "clutch" is so small and so few players possess it that it's incorrect to say that any player's clutch ability makes very much difference at all. Over the long run it will all cancel out.

As Troy said, BA w/RISP is based on small sample sizes. Very seldom will you here someone who truly knows what they're talking about argue that BA w/RISP is important. It's been shown numerous times that things like "clutch" aren't that important.

That being said, it makes sense to bat David Wright 3rd instead of Ramon Castro because Wright is a better hitter, on the whole. You want to maximize the number of times your best hitter comes to the plate. It has nothing to do with some inherent "RBI ability." RBIs are a function of hitter talent, place in the batting order, those ahead of him in the batting order, and little else.

If Castro somehow was put in the third spot for the Mets and allowed to bat every day, he could probably could muster up 80 RBI. That doesn't make him a great RBI hitter or any such thing.

As far as all of your situations go, we have a way of quantifying the run impact of each of these events. Once we've done this, we can see what is more valuable, what is less valuable, etc, which is why OBP is more important than BA. OBP isn't straight walks; it's hits and walks. Sure, you can't score a runner from second on a walk, but the run impact of a walk is more important than a single in the long run. No question about it.

BA w/RISP is a small sample size stat. If David Wright hit in 500 at bats with RISP he would have an average almost exactly the same as his regular average. Batting average is nice to have to score runs, but OBP and SLG are the most important factors in scoring runs.

I really dont understand this debate. I don't think its an either or controversy.

you cant rely purely on statistics because the statistics are flawed cause they don't cover every aspect of what makes up a baseball player. And you cant go purely on what you see cause you can't see everything all the time.

you need both.

sorry about the double post, feel free to remove one.

Why are RBIs considered a "invalid" stat??? I see people saying BA w/ RISP is much more impotant. A few things are wrong with that: does being able to hit a 2B+ to score a runner from first not count? does hitting a solo HR not drive in a run? does hitting a sac fly not count? does hitting the ball in play with the infield back and a runner on 3rd not count? And just bc you got a hit with a RISP, doesnt mean that runner scored. You can have an IF hit, you can not hit the ball hard enough to score the runner from 2nd...

The one thing a lot of people forget is, the GMs and managers in baseball know a million times more about baseball than 99.99% of people out here, and its not like they are unaware of these stats, so I trust their judgment a whole heck of a lot more than I trust "internet peoples" judgement.

Theres a reason why David Wright bats 3rd, in an RBI spot, for the mets, and not 6th or 7th, bc he has a .243 BA w/ RISP last year. and btw, he still had 124 RBIs, not too shabby

Im going to post this in 2 parts bc it will probably be cut short....

I for one am one who uses both "scouting" and stats, but would fall more towards the "scouting side"

IMO, there needs to be a balance betweent the two, too far one side or another is like trying to paint a picture with only half the colors.

Two quick things that bother me about SABR people (I'll wont cite examples of things that bother me about "scouting" people bc its most likely preaching to the choir here)

Why is BA so readily dismissed in favor of OBP by SABR people? Whens the last time someone scored, when bases arent loaded, from a BB? whens the last time a BB advanced a runner from 1st to 3rd? Im not saying BA is the end all be all, but it more than deserves a spot at the table.

As some of you know, I'm a huge Braves fan, but I've grown to adore the Rays, Brewers, and Twins (and starting the same with the Royals) all for their own reasons, but mainly because at one point in time I loved their front office staff. This doesn't necessarily mean I'm a fan of each of these teams, but I watch many of their games. Being a college student and part-time worker gives me a lot of free time to read box scores, attend games, and watch them on tv or the internet.

I don't like this argument for one reason: I'm a Braves fan. When it comes to fantasy baseball, I enjoy reading the Forecaster and looking at all of the interesting things like xBA and contact rate, but I've never taken that much time where I could be practical at using it under fire, unlike the great Mike Podhorzer or Patrick DiCaprio.

Personally I play fantasy baseball as a way to get by in the off-season until the baseball season comes around, because I love baseball. I aspire to work in baseball once I graduate college, but if I do ever take in any baseball operations job, I can't say that I would prefer stats to scouting.

I think that's where some people get caught up in this debate. I saw Patrick's comment on the original article and I must agree that it is impossible to watch 400 games a year. I have MLB.tv and I probably watch 1.5 games a day, some of them being condensed versions, and others being the original broadcast.

I had a friend who is a sabermetrics geek like myself and he would always IM me or text me whenever his favorite player (Nick Markakis) put up a great line at the plate for the day. For him, though, that could be a day when Nicky goes 0/2 with 3 BBs and 2 runs scored. Getting fans to understand that getting on base and not creating outs are the most important aspects of effective offense is really what baseball writers need to be focusing on.

I would love to see beat writers and newspaper columnists, bloggers, or I guess basically anyone who writes about baseball in the public sphere to start using sabermetrics in a more meaningful way. Fangraphs does an excellent job of this and I think that a lot of people could learn from this style of analysis, rather than simply talking to a player/coach/manager and hearing that they're "changing his approach at the plate" or "working on his swing mechanics."

The post does a great job of laying out the basics of the sabermetrics vs scouts debate... Another problem I think that tends to contribute to his proposed "Catch-22" is that the most common place to find baseball stats are in box scores: when you want to see how your team did during a game, you go right to the box and you look at how many runs, RBI, hits, etc. that players contributed during a single game. The easiest way to fix this problem is to just replace BA with OBP in the box score. That way, fans could stop complaining that Pat Burrell is hitting .250 on the year and realize that his OBP (career .367 at the major league level) is often higher than players who hit for a higher average but don't necessarily get on base more. This simple distinction is enough to get people looking in the right direction when they analyze a player's daily performance within the context of their overall performance on the year.