Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

In setting up ATG teams, I've mostly ignored clutch ratings, because for the most part they make no sense to me. Great hitters in great years often have negative clutch ratings, and in a 200M+ league, with each roster full of amazing hitters, the clutch results might run to something like 20 clutch hits to 250 outs. Why should A-Rod's 2005 card, where he drove in 130 runs, produce 8 clutch outs, as it did for another team in a recent 300M+ league? That team had a 2-20 clutch result, which was about average for the league. Anyway, I haven't wanted to be scared off from great hitters by a few clutch outs that seem to make no logical sense, so I've deliberately ignored the DiamondDope clutch column.
But lately I've been reading in this forum about low priced batters who have generated IBB because of their positive clutch ratings, even when they're not very effective hitters otherwise. Often they have considerably more IBB than clutch hits, and that seems goofy but kinda cool to me
So, I decided to try a little experiment. In a 80M non-DH league that will start playing on Saturday, I've picked up .5M utility guy Cedric Durst to warm my bench. Durst isn't much of a hitter, but he does field 4 defensive positions, and he has a plus-13 clutch rating vs RHP. HAL seems to see players with few homers and decent RBIs as cluch, and, HAL apparently sees Durst as a clutch hitter because he got 25 RBI in 129 AB with no homers and a .248 BA. That works out to 100+ RBI in 500 AB. The fact that Durst served mostly as a PH on the 1927 Yankees likely is the actual reason for his decent RBI performance, but HAL doesn't know that.
Anyway, at .5M, Durst doesn't cost my team more than any other benchwarmer, and it would be interesting to see if, coming off the bench as a PH or to cover injuries, Durst will he pick up a few clutch hits and if HAL will bestow a few IBB on Durst as well.
Any comments on this "great experiment" would be welcome, and I'll post an end-of-year assessment of how the experiment has worked out.
https://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1759041

I recently tried the same thing but with the whole offense. was in yankee 71, only sanguillen and cobb did well. roger connor for 8 mil was terrieble . 245/322. finished 75 and 87

I applaud your experiment. It is a topic that I have considered, but it is complex. To that end, I created a team last year ($80M No DH Auto-League) where all the major players were positive-clutch including the entire lineup vs RHP. My intent was to follow closely and record each situation where clutch came into play for later analysis. When forming the team, I bypassed better players, in most instances, so as to choose only clutch-positive. I expected I would be lucky to finish 81-81.

But then it got weird. The team shot out of the gate like no other. They won 39 of the first 51 and not from late-inning clutch heroics. They were killing opponents usually winning 8-3. From memory, there was only one clutch hit in the first 30 games. I was having too much fun watching the team sweep every night, that I stopped paying attention to clutch. They came back to earth going 57-54 the rest of the way. They led the league with 96 wins and of course lost in the Semi's.

The lineup vs RHP produced a total of 4,517 PA and achieved 14 clutch hits. That is one clutch hit for each 323 PA, so roughly one every 8 games. The team scored 957 runs, so clutch was pretty minimal. By Pythag, the team should have won 94.8 games based on 957 RS and 807 RA. Taking off 14 runs scored equates to a Pythag of 93.6 wins. So, this simplistic analysis suggests a difference of 1.2 wins. My thought was that the sheer randomness (for this team that means positive luck/good fortune) was a greater impact than clutch hitting.

The eight batters vs RHP totaled a combined 36 positive clutch hit chances on their cards. If each bats 216 PA, that means the clutch chances would occur 1 in 48 PA (36/(216*8)). After reflection that made some sense to me. A clutch hit can only occur with two outs, so it is only one-third likely. Then, runners must be on second and/or third and I don't know that percentage of likelihood. Simply based on my results, I concluded the runners on base situation occurred 44.5% of the time. Mathematically, I rationalized: 1 in 48 PA chance x 3 (two out requirement) = 144. Then the 1 in 144 PA was further limited by runners on base and 144 / 44.5% = the 1 in 323 PA result from the team data. The 44.5% is higher than I intuitively thought going into the season, but then this team had a decent 0.290 BA and 0.363 OBP. Simply based on this single analysis, one might conclude that the value of a clutch hitting card chance should be discounted to 14.8% (100 x 0.333 x 0.445 = 14.82%). As I said, I was guessing it should have been 10% or lower, but I was using a much lower estimate for the likelihood of the runners on base requirement.

So, the Durst Experiment. My guess is the probabilities of any impact are quite low. HAL will not bat him vs LHP, so that wipes out 30% of his opportunities. Then, will he even bat 50 times? His 13 positive-clutch chances will come into play 1 in 16.6 PA, but then you need to discount that by the 14.82% (two outs and runners in position). He should get a clutch hit every 112 PA, based on this limited evidence. Who knows, maybe his Drunkard's Walk is successful and he gets two or three clutch hits. But if I were in Vegas this weekend for the big ballgame, I would bet he does not get a clutch hit. Keep us Posted!! -Crabby

Thanks for sharing your experience, Bunze0 and Crabby. I'm so leary of the way SOM handles clutch that I decided to make the minimum investment.
The thing that most bugs me about clutch is that most of the great hitters have neutral or negative clutch, so it's hard to figure out how to use it. For example, Ted Williams 1941 card (11.83M)--my favorite Ted card-- has a -9/-7 clutch, despite 120 RBI in 456 AB. Hugh Duffy's best card shows him driving in 145 runs, but his clutch is -10/-10. I'm not going to stop using those cards because a few ABs are affected by negative clutch.
So, I thought, let's try an inconsequential card and see what happens. One .5M guy on an 80M non-DH team featuring offensive starters who are mostly 15 game injury guys figures to get maybe 60 to 80 ABs. That will give me a chance to see what kind of impact clutch has on performance while making a minimal investment and taking a minimal risk.
I wouldn't be surprised to see only a very small number of clutch opportunities. But that makes it easier to track--I don't have to analyze an entire team, just look at the few games in which Durst actually plays. What I'm actually most interested to see is whether pitchers intentionally walk Durst in clutch situations--as some have reported they do with high clutch hitters. It seems to me that the IBBs may be more valuable offensively than the clutch hits.
Willie Wells (9.53M) is going to be my leadoff man. Wells has negative clutch. I'm figuring that if Durst PH for a pitcher in a clutch situation and HAL intentionally walks him to get to Wells, that's a plus for my team. I don't know if it will happen, or how often, but we'll see.

" I'm so leary of the way SOM handles clutch"

The clutch is not a mystery, it is explained right in the rules. The stuff that is a little bit of a mystery (as to how it works) are things like homefield advantage.

I've heard players refer to IBBs given by SOM to good clutch hitters when common sense would say not to do it. I've very interested what the IBB numbers for some of these guys are over an entire season. It could even become a factor in choosing to roster some low priced guys. Please let us know how it works out.

In both ATG and 20xx, if you have a guy with +clutch 9 times out of 10 he gets intentionally walked in a clutch situation. I too have built roster full of + clutch hitters with minimal affect. You get more intentional passes but even with +13 clutch that means a 12% chance of a clutch hit (13/108) on the hitters card and of course there is only a 50% chance that you even roll on the hitters card. So + clutch doesnt get you many hits, just intentional walks.