There’s very little evidence that a batter’s average with RISP differs markedly, over the long term, than overall average. Huff’s career average with no-one on base is .275; his career average with RISP is .276. His OBP is about 40 points higher with RISP, and that’s mostly accounted for by extra walks, which makes sense because a pitcher might be more likely to pitch around a hitter with first base open when there are runners on second and/or third.
RBIs are, apart from home runs, completely dependent on people getting on base in front of you.
Who knows, maybe Huff will do great for the Tigers. Good luck to him. But i’m not sure i’d be pinning any major hopes on a guys who is OPSing .725.
Walking him would likely bring up Cabrera. That would not likely happen. A power hitter who hits 275 with runners in scoring position is not a bad thing. By the way RBIs and hitting with RISP are absolutely not meaningless stats.
If you look back over someone’s season, like Huff’s in this case, and see that they have hit for high average with RISP, and have a lot of RBIs, then that tells you something about how valuable they have been in the immediate past.
What it really tells you nothing about, though, is how valuable they are likely to be in the future, because these stats are not good predictive stats. RBI, as i said, is based heavily on people getting on base in front of you. And batting average with RISP is not really a repeatable skill. That is, for most players over the course of a career, their average with RISP will generally not be very different from their overall average.
Huff this year is hitting .253 overall, and .324 with RISP. That is most likely a short-term statistical aberration, not an indication that Huff has some special ability to hit with RISP.
Over his career, he is .276 with RISP, and .284 overall. These numbers are pretty close, and over the course of his career he is actually slightly worse with RISP than he is in other situations.
As i said, he might do great for the Tigers. He might go on a late-season tear like he did for Baltimore last year. I hope he does, because i’m rooting for the Tigers in the Central. But the fact that he has 72 RBIs and a flukey high average with RISP this season is pretty much irrelevant.
I read before that a good clutch hitter is one who hits just as well in tough situations as he does with normal game pressure. Some guys choke. Huff does not show that. Even his lifetime trend of hitting as well in clutch situations is a positive.
Let’s see if the Cards can take another from the Dodgers tonight. It was nice to see them win in LA last night.
Seems John Smoltz is leaning toward signing with St. Louis. This looks like a low-risk move for St. Louis. As I understand it, Boston is still on the hook for most of his 2009 salary. But, does he have enough left to contribute in a setup role?
What I’m seeing now is that Smoltz will sign as the fifth starter, at least for now, and possibly move to the setup role later.
Interesting. If Smoltz can pitch effectively, St. Louis will have a killer rotation. If not, it will have been an interesting failed experiment that (I hope) leaves them no worse off than they were before.
Last night’s Yankees-A’s game had one of those little incidents that i love, a nice one-on-one comeback.
In the first inning, with 2 outs, CC Sabathia pitched behind Oakland catcher Kurt Suzuki. There’s little doubt it was intentional, and it was apparently some payback for A-Rod getting hit previously. Anyway, the umpire warned both benches and the game resumed.
The very next pitch was right over the plate, and Suzuki smashed it into the left field bleachers. Lovely to watch.
A player who actually tends to choke in such situations won’t make the major leagues. Professional baseball is a gigantic process of weeding out people who CAN’T take the pressure. If you can’t handle the difference between hitting with runners on and hitting with the bases empty, you probably couldn’t handle playing major league ball in the first place.
No player who plays a substantial amount will demonstrate a predictable tendency to choke. Lots of players have had terrible playoffs; Ted Williams was awful in the only World Series he ever played in. That doesn’t mean Williams was a choker and Devon White, who played very well in the postseason, wasn’t; it’s just random chance. Over time the breaks even out.
There’s a difference. Playing for a perennial contender, in an environment where winning matters and is expected by a serious fan base as well as by the organization can certainly be the first time a player has ever encountered that kind of pressure. Some just can’t handle Boston, New York, or Chicago at all, or having to come up with a two-out, two-on, two-down, crowd-screaming hit into the gap, but they can be fine when they go to a “quieter environment”.
Winning just isn’t that important in the minors. Players are trying to develop their individual skills, get noticed, and get promoted. Winning just isn’t that important for noncontending teams either, sadly - they start the season bravely, but then, as the shrink in The Natural kept saying, “Losing is a disease”. Players on a bad team are trying, just as they did in the minors, to get noticed so they can get traded to or signed by decent teams instead. There just aren’t any true clutch hitting situations in Pittsburgh or Baltimore, so any stats claiming to show any insight about them are useless.
All I can tell you is that he couldn’t get guys out in Boston. But then neither could Joel Pineiro. Good luck.
I wonder how just the move back to the NL will do for Smoltz. That could be the difference maker all by itself. He won’t return to glory, but if he can put up 3rd rotation numbers in the 4 or 5 slot, that’s all you can ask for.
Because of the way the schedule falls, the Cards won’t have to go to their fifth starter very much for the rest of the season. They get enough days off that they can cycle through four starters a few times without hitting #5. So, Smoltz’s 42-year-old body will get a bit of rest. I don’t know if he can be effective for the next two months, but it’s worth a shot.
I wish Smoltz success (now that he’s no longer on the Red Sox.) He’s always been a class act and a great pitcher. I was at Yankee Stadium for Game 2 of the Series in 1996. We were standing near the players entrance talking a little smack as the Braves entered the building. Almost everyone blew right by us with their eyes straight ahead, but Smoltz actually stopped to talk. He was totally cool and in the few minutes he stood there he had everyone laughing. Sure he had won Game 1 the night before, but he was just a real classy guy.
Sorry, don’t buy it. Maybe in very rare cases, but in the great majority of MLB players alleged to have such deficiencies, it’s all post hoc rationalization. When someone starts getting good at predicting who will and won’t succeed in big markets before it happens, I’ll be impressed.
Now, turning an unassisted triple play to win a ballgame, that’s clutch:
I got to watch a good part of that game. It was very cool. With Lohse going down, Smoltz may have to rack up more starts than the Cards expected. That performance makes me feel better about that possibility. Sure, it was against San Diego and not, say, LA, but still… A couple of people with the team are saying Smoltz was tipping his pitches in Boston. Apparently half the Cards’ lineup came up to Smoltz on Day One and told him he was tipping. I’m always skeptical of tales of pitchers tipping pitches because I would think that the team he was playing for would either figure it out or get the word somehow – maybe when a player is traded to the team or something. Did half the AL know he was tipping but the Red Sox didn’t? Seems unlikely to me, but what the hell do I know? In any case, if Smoltz can continue pitching well, the Cards have a helluva pitching staff.
There’s no way to do that, obviously, other than by instinct based on watching the guy play and, where possible, talking with him and his teammates. There’s no useful stats to extrapolate from, only (yes, here it is again) watching the game, and even that leads only to a leap of faith when making a deal. As Yogi says, “You can observe a lot just by watching”.
That from a guy who claims to believe in chance. Is there any way to predict “who will and won’t succeed” in that? Oh well, anything for an argument, I suppose. Bayard, interesting anecdote about Smoltz tipping. It doesn’t explain his degraded control and breaks in Boston, though.
Or else it could just be that he can still get it done if he stays in a less-competitive league.
