Clutch Hitting - do we care?

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tmfw30

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Clutch Hitting - do we care?

PostThu Aug 31, 2017 5:44 pm

I'm trying to find a proportionate approach to hitters' clutch ratings. I suspect it's playing too large a role in my roster and lineup decisions and I'm spending too much time staring at that aspect of the hitter cards. I'm curious if there has been any analysis of this and to what extent other managers factor in those little "$"'s on the card. Thanks!
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andycummings65

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Re: Clutch Hitting - do we care?

PostThu Aug 31, 2017 6:02 pm

I treat Clutch as one extra chocolate chip in your cookie. It's great, but not worth worrying about if that one extra chocolate chip is in there.
I just looked at one of my recently completed teams. Clutch came into play 25 times, or about .5% of the At Bats in the Season. Not 25 Clutch HITS, but simply 25 times it came into play.

99.5% of the At Bats did not involve Clutch at all. I just don't think it's worth worrying about.
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MARCPELLETIER

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Re: Clutch Hitting - do we care?

PostMon Sep 11, 2017 6:53 pm

Add to this that SOM incorporates the value of clutch in its price evaluation. So if you play in a cap-limited league, the impact of going with good clutch or not is even more blunted.

This said, I would still never use a player with a very bad clutch at the 5th spot.... Some owners, I'm sure, will have examples where they used a guy with v-10 clutch rating in the 5th spot with a 100 rbis production, but my reasoning is that this player would have had his 100 rbis (and more) if he had hit 3rd, which is the roster spot with the least clutch opportunities. Besides, HAL uses a lot of intentional walks (unless the owner changes the default settings) to avoid a good clutch hitter and face a very bad clutch guy...so the 100 rbis might be inflated and hinder the fact that the 4th hitter had less occasions to produce runs...

I also try to avoid using a very bad clutch after the pitcher in leagues where pitchers hit...

But I don't make a criteria of player selection, I just make the best lineup from what I got once my selection of players is set.
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MARCPELLETIER

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Re: Clutch Hitting - do we care?

PostMon Sep 11, 2017 7:05 pm

Besides, HAL uses a lot of intentional walks (unless the owner changes the default settings) to avoid a good clutch hitter and face a very bad clutch guy


This said, HAL's tendency to yield intentional walks freely to face a guy with a bad clutch can be used to your advantage...In one of the league I'm playing, the leader in intentional walks is by far and away Hugh Duffy, who has a clutch of -9 or -10. He gets tons of IBB because Hal prefers to face Pujols, whose clutch stands at -11. I think this works at the advantage of the owner who has Duffy and Pujols. I think I would prefer to have Pujols and his 18 extra-base hits + with 2 or 3 men on-base than Duffy with one man on base...(especially considering that Duffy is a 1-17 runner and is probably not held if a runner stands at second base...)
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Spider 67

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Re: Clutch Hitting - do we care?

PostSat Sep 23, 2017 1:54 pm

Inspired by Marc's comment about HAL giving preference to facing negatively rated clutch hitters, I looked at 6 of my 2016 season teams:

Positively rated clutch hitters: 9091 appearances on hitters card, average weighted CL rating 6.32, 66 clutch hits, for calculation of 12.4% chance of clutch situation.

Negatively rated clutch hitters: 8129 appearances on hitters card, average weighted CL rating -4.94, 50 clutch outs, for calculation of 13.4% chance of clutch situation.

This may be too small a sample to use, and is clearly biased by my POS-rated player selection, but it would lend support to Marc's comment (about an 8% bias toward negatively rated hitters). I may try to evaluate some full leagues to see if the pattern holds.
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Chris Franco

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Re: Clutch Hitting - do we care?

PostWed Oct 25, 2017 9:11 pm

MARCPELLETIER wrote:if he had hit 3rd, which is the roster spot with the least clutch opportunities.


Lineup order 1-8...
Whats the rank...most to least?
(League with pitchers hitting)
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ROBERTLATORRE

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Re: Clutch Hitting - do we care?

PostThu Oct 26, 2017 8:52 am

Hi guys, help me understand what I am missing. I go to the Sim Misc tab on the stats page for my team, and in the clutch column my teams average 10-20 affected results for the entire season. For 20 ABs out of 6000 or so, the SOM clutch feature seems minimal.

Am I misunderstanding how it works? 2 outs runners in scoring position, result on the hitters card has a "$" reverses a single to a lineout and a lineout to a single?

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