baseball playoffs

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by itjclarke

I can't imagine you really believe all this stuff... or at least I'll tell myself that in hopes of not getting fully hooked. I also cannot imagine you believe the "clutch is myth".

The beauty of postseason anything is that once these guys reach their sport's respective pinnacles, they have to perform, right then a there. No BS about small sample size. Would you argue that Madison Bumgarner's 0.25 ERA over 36 innings in WS play is too small to matter? or his 18 scoreless innings in winner take all Wild Card games (2 complete game road shut outs). Or on the flip side when some other Cy Young worthy guy like David Price gets blasted over a similar post season sample size?

Sure you can argue that these guys' playoff sample sizes are too small to judge, and were they perhaps to get 162 games of postseason, they'd eventually perform to their career averages. I think that argument is BS, but I'll humor it. Sure some guys like Jeter are incredibly consistent, post season or regular (that's great), but there are also some that clearly fold while others rise. Check out guys like Ryan Vogelsong, Matt Cain, Timmy, Javier Lopez, Jeremy Affeldt, etc... all who's post season #'s far exceed regular. Anyway, the problem with the small sample size argument is that many of the guys in the post season (this year included) will probably NEVER get another chance to perform. That's one of the beauties of these moments... Howard Emke, Don Larsen, Francisco Cabrera.. this post season, Conner Gillaspie. Some guys step up that moment and grab it. It doesn't matter, and is not even worth arguing that sample sizes are too small, or that performance would have evened out over a longer duration, BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT GUARANTEED THOSE EXTRA GAMES!!

Let's consider "clutch" play, or its opposing force-- choking. Do you think Nick Anderson wasn't aware of the situation when missed 4 straight free throws, any of which would have iced the game? I guess he'd have made his next 14, but too bad they lost before he could. Do you think Gary Anderson wasn't aware of the situation when he shanked a 25 yard FG, after going the whole season without a miss? People are human and some guys let these moments get the best of them. You could argue that Gary Anderson's miss was too small a sample size to judge, and if he'd had 30 more attempts at a game winning NFC championship game chip shot, statistics show he'd make them all... too bad his team didn't make 30 more NFC championship games in order to give him 30 more opportunities at chip shots to take them to the Super Bowl trip. On the flip side, guys like Vinetieri, Montana, Bumgarner, Reggie Jackson are just wired differently, and I can assure each of their respective managers and coaches have recognized this. In the everyday business/professional world, I come across different people all the time, and these types of traits show through. Some guys know they'll win and do, while some guys always seem to be preparing for the worst. Whether Bill James' stats can prove this or not, it is very real, and has a definite impact on outcomes.

With regards to intangibles and team chemistry, I think there's a lot there and though again probably nothing that can be proven via baseball's metrics. That doesn't mean they're not important, even essential to a team's success, just that mathematics don't yet understand. There are players who time and time again not only rise to the occasion, but help bring others around them along for the ride. Not to keep coming back to the Giants, but MadBum vs the Mets is a prime example. The guy is napping on the bus to CitiField, is dead calm before, during and even after the game. I think his calmness feeds into other players' confidence. Joe Montana breaking the ice by spotting John Candy before his game winning 92 yard TD drive in SB XXIII is another prime example. On the flip side, there are examples like the aforementioned Nick Anderson, or what I watched this year in SF with Santiago Casilla and an eventual meltdown within the entire bullpen. Funny thing about that latter, the SF bullpen was pretty good in every inning but the 9th. You think those guys weren't affected by the pressure the came with that moment?? And do you think it's not important that a manager can try to wade through these very human emotions (flaws or strengths), in addition to statistics, to determine who's best and when?

Re- chemistry, Matt Duffy wrote a nice little article on Derek Jeter's web site. He said that when he made the jump to the Giants straight from AA ball, there was no hazing. Instead he was immediately engaged by all star caliber players like Hunter Pence who went out of their way to make him comfortable. That comfort showed early in his MLB career as he was confident enough to try (and succeed) to score from 2nd on WP to tie game 2 of the NLCS in the 9th. This is a late season call up, a rookie who barely made the postseason roster, and was put in to pinch run down 1 run in the 9th. If he gets thrown out at home, the game's over. If he stays at 3rd, no one thinks worse of him... yet he had the guts in that moment to take home. I think the ease he felt within that clubhouse may have gone a long way into how aggressively and instinctively he played that. Sure teams like the 1970's A's and Yankees were at each others' throats (Reggie Jackson is a common denominator) but I think most guys play better when they're comfortable (not all of course, see Barry Bonds or Kobe who needed the chips on their shoulder), and that most winning teams have had very good chemistry... though I do admit winning begets good chemistry, while losing has the opposite effect.

ok, lots to go through here so give me second to break it all down:

A-yes ,Bumgarner's performance is good, but claiming he is wired differently is not backed up by evidence of a large enough sample size to be legitimate. You can rant about it all you want, but this is a fact. Stop looking at things through fan colored glasses and look at it scientifically


B- clutch situations happen certainly, but clutch as a skill possessed by some player's and not other's does not. This is a fact based upon thousands of pieces of data. People point to Jeter or Papi or any other player, but this is confirmation bias and recency bias. You look at their numbers in the postseason and in high leverage situations, it ends up right around their career numbers. This has been endlessly analyzed and found to be true. Certain player's being "clutch" is a myth. as sure a myth as Bigfoot or Chupacabras.


C-Matt Duffy thing: anecdotes, while nice, are not evidence (nor is the plural of anecdote, evidence) team chemistry exists, but there is no evidence that it is required to perform well as too many teams who had player's who hated each other have done well (late 70's Yankees, 2000's Giants) Plus, when you consider how much expanded playoffs has increased the level of randomness into the results, I would say that chemistry means less now than ever before


D-the thing with fans is, we like to believe stuff is true about player's we like/hate , the media knows this and thus these myths get created about players that aren't true like "he's clutch" or "he's not" or "he's a postseason monster"....etc this is called CONFIRMATION BIAS, and it drives 99% of the bad information out there in sports land. Combine that with RECENCY BIAS (the idea that a person feels recent events are signals of a greater effect that must be changed, like when people say 'player ABC isn't hitting move him in the order" after 4 games. In the regular season you would never do this. But people get kinda silly in the playoffs.


E- I find it amusing that so many people these days have become anti-intellectual to the point where they refuse to acknowledge new data in favor of old beliefs. (not saying you in particular, but some on this board surely) Time moves on, better information comes with it, better methods, better tools, better data. That's all modern metrics are They take the same game and dig inside the old stats to create new and better one's that increase our understanding of it! it isn't just a bunch of nerds like so many a-holes like to say. EVERY SINGLE TEAM in baseball is doing this to one level or another. Why? Because it works, and to ignore it is to be left behind.