Best place to put clutch hitters?

[ANDYCOCHRANE]

Am I correct in thinking that, ideally, players 4th, 5th and 6th in the line up should have best clutch ratings? Does this therefrore mean that Sheffield, say, with -1 clutch would be better in the 4th or 5th spot than someone like ARod with -14 clutch? In this case would Rodriguez be better hitting 3rd, even if his card was similar to Sheffield, or even if it was more suited to 4th spot?

[visick]

Clutch opportunities come up typically in the 5th and 7th spot.

[UrbanShockers]

Doesn't it vary in DH and non-DH leagues?

[ANDYCOCHRANE]

Why 5th and 7th spots in particular? I understand the basics of clutch but the advanced stuff is a bit beyond me at present. Can anyone help?

[durantjerry]

To me the 5th spot makes sense because in the first inning, the fifth guy would get up with two outs and two men on(which guarantees a guy in scoring position), which is a clutch opportunity. Leadoff or second also makes sense to me in a pitchers league, where the last guy is sacrificing a lot providing potential clutch opportunities for the top of the order. It has been posted in the best, but the rest is beyond me also.

[worrierking]

Fifth spot is generally believed to get the most clutch opportunities. I believe it has been studied, not just theorized. Most of that comes from the first inning as Durantjerry posted.

I don't get too concerned over it in a hitter's park. It's more important in a pitcher's park where a higher percentage of runs score on singles. Even then I wouldn't put a guy who was otherwise not a good fifth hitter there just to take advantage of his positive clutch.

One other issue to consider is the second inning. The fifth spot in the lineup leads off the second inning more often than any other lineup spot (in real MLB, I'm not sure this is true in TSN SOM), so I believe a good OB% is needed here almost as much as good clutch. I wouldn't go overboard sacrificing OB% for clutch.

[markp65]

To expand upon the W-King's point, I'd suggest that anyone playing in pitchers' parks would be wise to wallpaper their entire lineup with non-BPHR-dependent positive clutch guys, to maximize those precious scoring opportunities. Players like Burke, Newhan and Erstad are examples from the current deck.

Can anyone corroborate or disprove the idea that the clutch symbol in pitcher's parks is comparable in importance to the BPHR symbol in home run parks? I've had some limited, statistically insignifcant success using lineups of non-BPHR positive clutch guys in pitchers' parks and also BPHR guys with negative clutch in HR parks.

[worrierking]

A quick followup to my previous post. I did an informal study of about 300 games from several different 2004 teams of mine to confirm or discredit my belief that the fifth hitter leads off the second inning more often than any other hitter. In the limited study, I found that the fourth hitter actually leads off the second slightly more often than the fifth hitter. The breakdown was thus:

4th 32%
5th 29%
6th 20%
7th 11%
8th 4%
9th 1%
1st 1%
2nd 1%
3rd 1%

Numbers rounded obviously.

What I think this shows is that while the fifth hitter batted in the first inning nearly 40% of the time, frequently in a clutch situation, he batted more often in a spot where a good OB% would be useful, as the first or second hitter in the second inning. What needs to be determined would be the relative weight of the clutch situations in the first inning compared to the OB% situations in the second. Obviously an opportunity to score a run with an RBI has a greater value than trying to set up the second inning, but to what degree?

What I didn't look at and might do sometime is check and see actually how many first inning situations lead to a clutch opportunity for the fifth hitter. There was an assumption posted earlier that if the fifth hitter bats in the first, it would automatically be a clutch situation. This is not the case necessarily. He could be batting with one out or no outs. If there are two outs, it's possible the fourth hitter singled home another runner leaving a non-clutch at bat. Or if anybody hit a two-run homer previously, a two-out at bat would not be a clutch opportunity.

Still some work to do. Now they say we will have the option of turning off the clutch for '06. Just when I start figuring it out!

[franky35]

thanks for the great data. really helpful.

[worrierking]

One other thing that needs to be considered is that every time a fifth hitter bats in the second it wll [u:be5661d2e6]not[/u:be5661d2e6] be a clutch situation (unless he's batting for the second time).