- Posts: 523
- Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2012 1:35 pm
Thu Oct 15, 2015 4:42 pm
Hey guys,
Yesterday was certainly an exciting day for the MLB playoffs and hopefully tonight provides more of the same.
I saw a conversation on the General Strategy Thread talking about how much, if any, clutch and GBA matter. You can view the topic here.
I wrote a bit about how clutch affected one of my 2011 teams in the past so I wanted to recycle it here today after reading the topic.
I think most people under-estimate clutch as it doesn't have a huge impact on each individual player. The average player in the 2012 card set has about 4.5 clutch units on their card. Assuming a player gets a full season of at-bats, taking into account how often clutch situations occur, and that half the rolls will occur on a pitchers card, the average player would see just about 2 clutch rolls in a season. A positive clutch player will see outs turn into base hits while a negative clutch player will see hits turn into outs. Just looking at an individual player it does not have a major effect. But looking at a team as a whole is a different story.
For a whole team there will be about 18-20 clutch rolls in a season. Some teams will be higher and some teams will be lower but in general this is about how many you should expect in one season. Every single one of these rolls either score a run(s) or end an inning with runner(s) in scoring position. This means if you had 20 clutch rolls and all were outs, you are directly losing between 20-40 runs plus any additional runs had the inning kept going. That's an extra run every 4-8 games!
To show an example of how badly clutch can effect your team, let's look at one of my 2011 teams. I drafted this team fairly quickly and while doing so did not factor in clutch ratings. I ended up with only Alex Rodriguez (+2) and Josh Thole (+1) with positive clutch ratings while the rest of the team was negative, some extremely negative (Casey Kotchman: -14). Under My Team and the the Sim Misc. tab, I can see that my team suffered tremendously because of it. I had only 1 clutch hit while 26 clutch outs. Here's a link to my team.
As you could probably guess this was a losing team for me, I finished with a record of 77-85; 13 games out of first place. Now going through my results, I had 41 losses by only 1 or 2 runs including 14 games that I lost in extra innings. 26 clutch outs cost me at least 26 runs and more likely around 45 due to multiple runners in scoring position and extended innings from base hits instead of outs. 45 runs! That's the difference between a winning and losing record for this team. Considering 1/4 of all my games were lost by only a run or two I could have tied or taken the lead in about 6 or 7 extra games! The wild card winner in this league finished with 83 wins, or about what I would have had if I had positive clutch hitters instead of negative. Clutch hitting could have cost me a playoff appearance.
Now obviously there are a lot of assumptions made in here that would not be true for every team. However it is clear that clutch hitting could make a significant impact on a team over a season and that it should certainly become a factor when considering how to build a winning team.
Obviously this doesn't mean that this should be the #1 thing when building your team. However I would consider clutch with your team as a whole and if you were deciding between two fairly similar players and one had a positive clutch rating, I would definitely move to grab that player rather than the other.
That's all I have for today. As always, if anyone has any questions please let us know at onlinegamesupport@strat-o-matic.com. Talk to everyone next week!
-John
Yesterday was certainly an exciting day for the MLB playoffs and hopefully tonight provides more of the same.
I saw a conversation on the General Strategy Thread talking about how much, if any, clutch and GBA matter. You can view the topic here.
I wrote a bit about how clutch affected one of my 2011 teams in the past so I wanted to recycle it here today after reading the topic.
I think most people under-estimate clutch as it doesn't have a huge impact on each individual player. The average player in the 2012 card set has about 4.5 clutch units on their card. Assuming a player gets a full season of at-bats, taking into account how often clutch situations occur, and that half the rolls will occur on a pitchers card, the average player would see just about 2 clutch rolls in a season. A positive clutch player will see outs turn into base hits while a negative clutch player will see hits turn into outs. Just looking at an individual player it does not have a major effect. But looking at a team as a whole is a different story.
For a whole team there will be about 18-20 clutch rolls in a season. Some teams will be higher and some teams will be lower but in general this is about how many you should expect in one season. Every single one of these rolls either score a run(s) or end an inning with runner(s) in scoring position. This means if you had 20 clutch rolls and all were outs, you are directly losing between 20-40 runs plus any additional runs had the inning kept going. That's an extra run every 4-8 games!
To show an example of how badly clutch can effect your team, let's look at one of my 2011 teams. I drafted this team fairly quickly and while doing so did not factor in clutch ratings. I ended up with only Alex Rodriguez (+2) and Josh Thole (+1) with positive clutch ratings while the rest of the team was negative, some extremely negative (Casey Kotchman: -14). Under My Team and the the Sim Misc. tab, I can see that my team suffered tremendously because of it. I had only 1 clutch hit while 26 clutch outs. Here's a link to my team.
As you could probably guess this was a losing team for me, I finished with a record of 77-85; 13 games out of first place. Now going through my results, I had 41 losses by only 1 or 2 runs including 14 games that I lost in extra innings. 26 clutch outs cost me at least 26 runs and more likely around 45 due to multiple runners in scoring position and extended innings from base hits instead of outs. 45 runs! That's the difference between a winning and losing record for this team. Considering 1/4 of all my games were lost by only a run or two I could have tied or taken the lead in about 6 or 7 extra games! The wild card winner in this league finished with 83 wins, or about what I would have had if I had positive clutch hitters instead of negative. Clutch hitting could have cost me a playoff appearance.
Now obviously there are a lot of assumptions made in here that would not be true for every team. However it is clear that clutch hitting could make a significant impact on a team over a season and that it should certainly become a factor when considering how to build a winning team.
Obviously this doesn't mean that this should be the #1 thing when building your team. However I would consider clutch with your team as a whole and if you were deciding between two fairly similar players and one had a positive clutch rating, I would definitely move to grab that player rather than the other.
That's all I have for today. As always, if anyone has any questions please let us know at onlinegamesupport@strat-o-matic.com. Talk to everyone next week!
-John