Odd Why SOME Players Never Get Accused of "Choking"

Cafe Society
1

Up front, as people who’ve seen my posts here before know, I do NOT believe there’s any such thing as a “clutch” player or a “choker.” I believe that, over the long run, players perform in the post-season almost exactly as they do in the regular season. If one player seems to “elevate his game” in the clutch, it’s probably because he hasn’t appeared in enough “big games” to give a representative sample of his performance. Similarly, if a player seems to collapse in the post-season, it usually means he hasn’t made enough post-season appearances to tell us anything useful.

And if a TEAM seems to make the playoffs every season and lose, that’s usually an indication that:

  1. There’s another team out there that’s a little better; the COlts aren’t “choking” if they lose to a Patriots squad that’s just a little more talented.

  2. They’re playing a game like baseball, in which a short series is pretty close to a tossup. If the 2007 Red Sox played the 1962 Mets 100 times, the Sox would win 80 times… but it would be no great shock if the Mets took 3 out of 5 in a short series. That wouldn’t make the Sox “chokers”- that’s just the way baseball goes sometimes. The better team DOESN’T always win.

Still, even though I don’t believe in “choking,” it’s interesting to me that some guys, like Alex Rodriguez, get accused of it so regularly when there are other great athletes who are much MORE deserving of the label, if we go by the stats.

Suppose I told you there was a Hall of Famer who won a Rookie of the Year Award and an MVP Award. Further, suppose I told you he had a lifetime average of .311 and an on-base percentage of .409

This gentleman played in the World Series six times. Know what his average was? A measly .234!

What’s more, he played in the media capital of the world. You’d THINK a guy with so much talent who folded in all the “big games” he played in would be vilified as a choker. I mean, the dropoff in his performance was waaaaay worse than Alex Rodriguez’s!

So… why doesn’t anyone ever suggest that Jackie Robinson was a choker and a loser who never delivered in the clutch?

I know, the question is pretty self-evidently stupid. Jackie Robinson was probably the most courageous ballplayer who ever lived. This is a guy who could hit .342 while listening to vile epithets and receiving daily death threats in the mail. The idea that he could be unnerved just because he was playing in the World Series is asinine.

His defenders would RIGHTLY point out that, since his steely nerves couldn’t possibly be in question, his poor performance was just a fluke, luck of the draw. Surely, they’d day, if he had more at-bats in the World Series, he’d eventually have put up the kind of numbers he did all year long.

To which I say… exactly! And it’s no different with A-Rod. So shut up about “choking” and “big games.”

2

“Choking” does have a precise definition in sports medicine: it’s the sudden inability to do something you normally do without thinking (usually because you’re thinking about it).

In baseball, the clear example is Rick Ankiel. In 1999, he was 11-7 with a 3.50 ERA in the regular season. In the postseason, he could not find the plate. Hell, he couldn’t even find the catcher. He walked 11 batters in 4 innings pitched, but was worst against the Mets, with three walks and two wild pitches. From that point on, Ankiel could not pitch at a major league (or even minor league) level. It had nothing to do with ability – he didn’t suddenly lose his physical talent. But he could no longer do what he had done tens of thousands of times up until then: throw a good pitch. The change had to be in his thinking.

Two other examples are Mackey Sasser (a catcher who suddenly lost the ability to return the ball to the pitcher) and Chuck Knoblauch (a second basement who suddenly lost the ability to throw the ball to first base).

The same thing happens on a smaller scale: a ballplayer in a pressure situation starts thinking too much about what he does, which overcomes his instincts (hitting a ball happens too quickly to think about the aspects of it), and he hits badly. Rodriguez is especially conscious of his failures in the postseason and is probably overthinking his reaction. He may be letting off pitches that he’d swing at in a regular season game, or be anxious and swinging too soon. Whether it applies to Rodriquez or not can be debated (though he’s said himself that he feels the added pressure), but it’s a real phenomenon.

3

blah…blah…blah. A-Rod gets a “choking” rap because he is a highly paid (very high paid), high profile athlete who plays in a town that likes to win. Period.

If A-Rod was still playing for the Mariners and making much less money, and put up the same numbers, everyone would be saying what a steady player he is. Hell the “Killer B’s” in Houston took something like 7-8 playoff series before either of them even got a freakin hit!! Nobody called them chokers (not that I remember anyway).

It has nothing to do with the player so much as it does with the circumstances around that player.

4

People who understand statistics have looked at players who overperform or underperform in “clutch” situations and determined that some players do perform better/worse in the clutch.

“Choker and clutch” is not just media-babble.

Whether A-Rod is a real choker or whether his performance is within normal statistical variation, I do not know.

here is his baseball refernce page with a chart of his postseason performance. It’s not pretty.

Regular season: .306 hitter with an OPS of .967

Post season: .250 hitter with an OPS of .820.

His last 4 post-season series (including this one), he’s batted .258, .133, .071 and .200.

He’s got 142 post-season at bats. About a quarter of a seasons worth. The analysts were highlighting flaws in his swing the day. Maybe he’s technically NOT a choker because he doesn’t have enough at bats, but if you had to bet one way on the issue, would you really back him?

5

One thing we have to be careful when we look at stuff like this is the level of the opponents. During the season a batter is going to be able to bolster his average because fully half of the pitchers he faces are below average (by definition). Teams that have actually reached the post season, however, usually have above average pitching staffs with lower ERA’s. Lower ERA’s mean fewer hits, obviously.

6

And one could argue his low sampling of post season at bats is at least partially his fault. Just like you don’t pay Joe Torre several million a season to get to the playoffs and get knocked out in the first round, with a 200 million dollar plus payroll, you don’t pay A-Rod 30 mil per to bat .150 in the playoffs in New York. If he wants to be somehwere with no pressure, he should sign with Tampa Bay next year for the league minimum.

And Jackie Robinsion wasn’t the highest paid player in the league I don’t think.

7

Actually, it is different with A-Rod, for all of the reasons you just pointed out so eloquently. When you look at Jackie Robinson’s career as a whole, you see a host of things that speak to his ability to perform under pressure. Word like “heroic” and “courageous” come to mind. With A-Rod, not so much.

8

The clutch hitter thing is exaggerated in baseball but there definitely is such a thing as choking or staying cool under pressure. I saw a documentary once on a one of the science channels or something which showed some athletes do have a congential physiological response to stress which cause their respiraton to become more constricted (throat literally tightens) and they have less precise muscular control over certain actions. The show I saw was using golfers as an example and showing how some of them get the “yips” – tics in their swings, strangled grips, etc. – and some players just remain congenitally unaffected by pressure (Tiger) and their normal game takes no dip in clutch situations.

I think the amount of physiological response to stress is what accounts for players who choke and players who don’t. Joe Montana was called “Joe Cool” because he was calm and collected no matter what the situation. Tom Brady is like that too. Brett Favre gets jacked up and hyper and throws interceptions. I do think choking is a real phenomenon for individual athletes but not so much for whole teams (although an individual like Brady or a Montana can relieve feelings of stress in teammates which helps them perform better).

9

Choking, or bottling, is for sure a fact of the sporting landscape. Cannot see how it could be seen otherwise, although I appreciate that the OP is focussing on US team sport play-off performances versus regular season. Golf is a great example for choke-ology; other fine examples of sports where people go to pieces can be found in the alehouse: snooker and darts. Not sure if anyone plays snooker in the US, but it’s quite popular on UK tv. In its heyday in the 80s 18.5 million people watched the 1985 world championship - which finished after midnight! Classic choking behaviour - Steve Davis tanned Denis Taylor early on to go 8-0 up. No pressure on Taylor, he then levels it to 12-12. They make their way to a 17-17 tie (it’s the best of 35), and it goes down to the last black ball. Davis has a difficult shot to win it, but one a player of his calibre would make 100 times out of 100 in practice. His heart valve is going shilling-two bob and he misses it - Taylor sinks it to win the championship with a third of the UK population watching - legendary stuff!

I knew a few aspiring snooker players through a friend, and they would arrange to meet up and play each other for way more money than they could afford to lose. The reasoning was that they were all good - there wasn’t a huge gap between them and the pro’s skill wise. What they needed to get to the next level was the nerve and consistency to perform under pressure - they needed something to put the pressure on them.

Darts has a lot in common with the biathalon where you ski with a rifle - you need to stop your heart and just throw like a metronome. Phil - the power-Taylor is famous for this. The last UK championship final I caught had Martin Smith, a world class thrower, up against a qualifier. Smith shellacs him 5-0 and its the first to 6. Cue total loss of bottle, missed doubles, throwing sub 60 scores. The qualifier then starts throwing like a man who don’t give a fuck, levels it 5-5. The pressure comes on him then and he melts down in the last set and Smith squeaks it.

10

This came up (as a sub-sub-sub topic) in a Pit thread a few weeks ago. It came out that Derek Jeter, who is considered a great clutch player, has essentially the same batting average in the postseason that he does in the regular season. Since he’s performing under greater pressure and, perhaps more importantly, facing better opponents, I think that can legimitely be called clutch. (His playoff sample size is around a full season’s worth of at bats.) Most players will not play their best against the best competition, however, and so the act of being consistent becomes “clutch.” The phenomenon is real, in my opinion, even if it’s sometimes described inaccurately. A .200 hitter is not going to hit .400 in the playoffs over a long period of time, but ideas like “clutch” and “choker” are based as much on major events (like Jeter’s Flip) as they are on statistics - sometimes moreso.

I just looked up Mark Lemke’s stats. His playoff numbers are better than his regular season numbers, and any Braves fan will tell you how clutch he was - but basically, Lemke had a lot of series that were on par with his regular season numbers, and three ('91 World Series, '92 NLCS, and '96 NLCS) that were WAY better than his average.

I agree with your point about teams, though. I think people are MUCH too quick to say that a team, or more likely a given star, “can’t win the big one.” See Peyton Manning - until last year, when all of a sudden he could win the big one because he did. There’s no question that Manning had had some bad playoff games, but if the Colts never won a championship, Manning would not have been the reason, their defensive shortcomings (and perhaps matchups and arguably coaching) would have been the big reasons.

11

The term “choking” is stupid (in sports, anyway), unless you possess extrasensory powers and can determine why some athletes do better in big contests than others.

Dave Henderson, widely regarded as a clutch postseason baseball player, hit .298 in playoff and World Series games (.321 in the Series) while batting only .258 lifetime in the regular season. Barry Bonds has a lifetime .298 regular season BA but .236 for his career in the postseason (in only one year, 2002, did he excel).

If I was managing and needed a clutch Series hit, I’d still rather bat Alex Rodriguez than either of those two (or Mark Lemke, for that matter).

12

Knoblauch never suffered the sort of mental break than Ankiel or Sasser did where he simply couldn’t execute the throw. His defense happened to start degrading when he played for the Yankees, so people made a big deal about it, but he was still making most of the plays.

He made 26 errors the year he started really having defensive problems, but that was in the course of making over five hundred plays, most of them throws to first base. That’s bad for a major league second baseman but it’s not the same thing as Ankiel.

13

You know he did hit an old lady in the stands. His throwing ‘Yips’ were pretty severe.

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