Most fans are convinced that some athletes are truly “clutch” performers, and that others are chokers. Most serious sports analysts dismiss the idea. Over the long run, they say, the guys who hit .350 with men in scoring position in the bottom of the 9th are the same guys who hit .350 the rest of the time, the guys who make buzzer-beating 3-point shots are the same guys who hit them the rest of the time, and the quarterbacks who perform flawlessly in the post-season are the same guys who perform flawlessly all season long.
I count myself among the scoffers. But I’m wondering if anyone can point to stats that seem to indicate an athlete performs significantly better or substantially worse in “clutch” situations than his stats would lead us to expect. IS there anybody whose batting average plummets or soars when there are men on base in the bottom of the 9th? Anybody whose free throw percentage is substantially higher or lower in the playoffs than in the regular season?
Mind you, if you’re going to point to someone’s batting average or ERA in the postseason, make sure it’s someone whose got a LOT of at-bats or innings pitched in the post-season.Nobody deserves to be judged on one game, or even one series.
I’m looking for factual answers only. Is there anybody whose STATS indicate he’s a clutch performer or a choker? Or does everybody really perform the way he normally does in key games and pressure situations?
You can pencil me in as a person that believes clutch performance is BS. While I do think that there are people who perform worse in “clutch” situations, I do not think that athetes are able to “rise to the occasion” to a measurable level.
For baseball, at least, this has been thoroughly analyzed. Check out the archives at www.baseballprospectus.com. They’ve gone to a subscription format, so some stuff might now be for members only. Anyway, there was a massive study of all the hitters throughout the 1980’s which found that only 2 players hit sufficiently better in “clutch” situations to be considered clutch: Eddie Murray, and some no-name guy I can’t remember. Given such a large sample, it’s pretty much inevitable that some small number of players will exceed the norm. So the conclusion was that if clutch hitting exists, it is either a very rare trait, or exists to such a small degree (e.g., hitting .1% better), that it is undetectable.
Now, for choke hitting, that’s a different story. I’m unaware of any studies on that, and it seems somewhat more plausible to me that a player would play worse under pressure, rather than better. But I really can’t say for sure.
It would be reasonable to guess, though, that a player who choked under pressure would likely never make the major leagues. It’s kind of a high-pressure job.
Obviously some players do have impressive records of excellence in key games; Bob Gibson jumps to mind. Whether that’s fluke or ability is impossible to say, but certainly the number of players with remarkable clutch records is about what you’d expect by random chance, and you’ll find most players with allegedly good lutch records have their stats selectively chosen. Eddie Murray, for instance, was cited as having unusually good clutch hitting records in the regular season… but in the postseason his numbers were substantially below his personal standards.
Well, it’s hard to prove either case because there is no definition of a clutch situation and statistics alone don’t always indicate it.
For instance, Willis Reed came out in the seventh game of the 1970 NBA finals and scored two baskets at the beginning of the game. Yet anyone who saw the game will tell you that those two baskets – giving the Knicks a 4-0 lead, a trivial number in an NBA came – were instrumental in the victory (113-99 was the score, so a statistican would never realize it).
In baseball, a hit at any time in a playoff game is clutch due to the pressure.
Also in baseball, it’s interesting that the same people who argue that better clutch hitting is just a statistical fluke also argue that a batter who does well against a particular pitcher is not.
Ted Williams was a great ballplayer, but when the game was really important (like a playoff or World Series), his record was abysmal. At the same time, Bob Gibson or Reggie Jackson were at their best in the postseason.
You said you wanted factual answers, so I won’t opine (although I’d love an IMHO about this), but it’s going to depend on what you accept as evidence. Is a higher postseason home run/ AB rate sufficient proof? What about a higher batting average but lower slugging percentage, or vice versa? Things like that muddy the waters.
Anyway, Michael Jordan’s scoring average in the postseason was 33.4 as compared to 30.1 in the regular season. That’s a significant improvement, I think. Hakeem Olajuwon scored 26 a game in the postseason versus under 22 career, and shot a higher percentage. Allen Iverson’s scoring numbers are 27.0 regular season, 30.6 postseason.
Joe Montana’s much ballyhooed 11-0 TD/ Int ratio in the Super Bowl is pretty impressive, and a substantial improvement over his regular season numbers, albeit over only four games.
Lou Gehrig batted 21 points higher in 34 postseason games than he did in his regular season career, and his slugging and on-base percentages were similarly improved. Same thing for Hank Aaron- .362 postseason BA, .305 career.
In other words, the factual answer to the question is yes, some players did, and do, demonstrably perform better in the playoffs to a non-trivial degree. Whether or not that proves anything in a larger sense is another question altogether, in my opinion (whoops, there I go).
I once saw something on some science channel about how some athletes actually do undergo physiological changes under stress. They tense up, they get the “yips,” their concentration diminishes. The point of the piece was that “choking” is real, at least for some athletes. I think that the “clutch” performers are those who simply have a better mental response to stress. They don’t panic, they stay calm and focused, they have “icewater in their veins.” I believe this is a genuine distinction in the way some athletes resond to pressure situations. The “clutch” players don’t really get better so much as they just don’t get freaked out by pressure. Jordan was definitely like that and so was Joe Montana.
I think some players actually thrive on pressure situations. They love it and their game improves. There’s also something to “stepping it up” and simply trying harder in the playoffs than in the regular season. A player may get bored in a regular season NBA game but will be amped up in the playoffs.
Hitting a baseball is different in that it’s so damn hard to do anyway. I suppose the “clutch” hitters are those that either incidentally get big hits in opportunistic situations and thereby acquire the reputation somewhat tautologically. Kirk Gibson’s homerun in the Series against the A’s is kind of the classic clutch hit but dumb luck probably had as much to do with it as anything. I would guess that since hitting requires intense concentration, the ability to shut out physiological responses to stress would help too, though.
I don’t know about “clutch”, but I was a classic “choker” in highschool cross-country. In practice, I had 5K times as low as fifteen minutes and forty five seconds. However, in actual competition my best times as just over seventeen minutes. For some reason I just didn’t have as much “energy” in competition as I was able to muster in practice. Undoubtably, some of it had to do with the fact that we often ran on roads in practice, but not in meets. However, no one else on the team had this great of disparity between practice and competition performance.
I would love to look at those old stats because I’d swear Dave Winfield had a season where he had 125 RBI but most of them came when it didn’t matter; he’d hit a 3 run HR when the Yankees were already winning 6-1. Rarely when they “needed” it.
I’d like to see RBI broken down into two columns of RBI when losing or tied and RBI when leading. That would be a very telling stat.
The subject of clutch htting has been endlessly debated (and thoroughly debunked) within the baseball research community. The idea that some players have an ability to perform better in clutch situations, however you define that, is not supported by the data. If this were a skill, then the same players would consistently have better numbers in the “clutch.” Several studies (including one at my website show that isn’t so.
But, I think one problem with trying to nail down “clutch” performance is trying to separate it from normal fluctuations.
Take a guy that hits .333 one season. He’s not going 2-6 every night at the plate. Also, he might have had a month where he hit .400 and a month where he hit .250.
If he hits .400 over the month of October, it might just be a regular fluctuation of a .300 hitting. But everyone is going to call that guy clutch.
Montana had sets of 3 games during his career I’m sure where he threw 11 tds and 0 ints. He also happened to do it during his superbowls. It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s clutch.
