Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

Are the players ranked based on how they perform in the clutch?

Not sure I understand your question, but I'll just summarize clutch in general.

SOM defines a clutch situation as runners in scoring position and two outs. Rolls on a hitter's card that are preceded with a $ change their meaning in a clutch situation. If they're normally hits, they become outs in the clutch situation; if they're normally outs, they become singles in the clutch situation. (Thus, a good clutch hitter will have $ symbols next to outs, and the opposite.)

It's not clear how exactly SOM figures out the clutch rating, since it's [i:5c220da40c]not[/i:5c220da40c] based on the player's actual performance with RISP & 2 outs. It seems to me like it's based on some sort of prediction of how many runs an average player in the lineup of the player's team would drive in, but that's not at all clear. Anyway, it's not that important; they figure it out however they figure it out, and you can see from the cards how it's gonna play out.

There is also starting pitcher clutch, to reflect pitchers who allow a lot of baserunners but have lower ERAs than expected because they're good at "working out of trouble". However, that's not on the cards since it's not part of the board game; the exact details of how it works are unknown.

Clutch is presumably factored into players' salaries, but it's unclear how much.

Really, the whole thing is not a big deal IMHO. When you consider that there first has to be RISP & 2 outs, and that you then have to roll one of a couple of very specific rolls for the clutch effect to come up, you see that it doesn't end up making a difference in more than a few at-bats per year.