Bernstein Column

[Dick Allen]

Right. And since the samples are necessarily limited, they don't accurately predict future performance, which means they don't accurately identify players who are "clutch enough" to be expected to perform better in clutch situations. And so small sample numbers of players in clutch situations are not useful identifiers of good clutch players.

 

You can use clutch score, leverage index, raw WPA/LI, RISP, postseason, or whatever. The bottom line is that for any given player, his career batting line is a more accurate predictor of his situational performance than his past performance in the same situation. So there is no player, anywhere, who you can point to and accurately say, "this guy is probably going to do well in this situation because he has a history of doing well in this situation."

But the situations are different. You are saying just because a guy is a good hitter in a 8-2 game, he will be equally as good given the sample size is adequate in a 4-3 game in the ninth inning with men on base. If players were computers or we were playing Strat-o-matic and rolling dice, I would agree, but there is a human element, and pressure affects people differently. In golf, some great golfers make 5 foot puts with a tournament on the line, others lip them out. In basketball some 80% free throw shooters make their free throws in the first half, but at the end with the game on the line, seem to miss more often. Same thing in baseball. Same thing in business. Same thing in relationships. Same thing in everything.

Edited May 8, 2014 by Dick Allen

[Eminor3rd]

You are saying just because a guy is a good hitter in a 8-2 game, he will be equally as good given the sample size is adequate in a 4-3 game in the ninth inning with men on base.

 

Yes. It's not something I believe or think should be the case, but it is. It's a fact that has been studied and proven.

 

If players were computers or we were playing Strat-o-matic and rolling dice, I would agree, but there is a human element, and pressure affects people differently. In golf, some great golfers make 5 foot puts with a tournament on the line, others lip them out. In basketball some 80% free throw shooters make their free throws in the first half, but at the end with the game on the line, seem to miss more often. Same thing in baseball. Same thing in business. Same thing in relationships. Same thing in everything.

 

I know what you're saying and I agree that it's real. It just turns out that at the highest level of baseball specifically, these guys are good enough mentally and physically to keep it "turned on" all or most of the time. I don't know if this is the case in basketball or golf or anything else -- I wouldn't be surprised either way.

 

Guys have rough days, guys have lazy days, guys get hot, guys are distracted, guys have bad attitudes, guys dog it, guys pick up their teammates, etc., I grant this. All these things affect individual outcomes. But in the end, the differences at that level aren't enough to predict future behavior.

[StrangeSox]

It's not like the "human element" and how pressure affects people wouldn't show up in the stats, anyway. If someone pretty much always sucked in close-and-late situations, it could be measured. You can break down all of this stuff with all sorts of splits.

 

It's just that at the MLB level, you really don't see too much variance in how a guy performs in 20-0 blowouts versus close-and-late, given enough sample size. If your performance always starts to decline when it matters most, you're probably not going to get called up anyway.

[bmags]

Updated numbers, looks like Bernstein will have to edit his article (just like last time), and it looks like now the Abreu love is justified:

 

Abreu 150 wRC+ 1.2 WAR

Rizzo 143 wRC+ 1.0 WAR

 

Thanks, I didn't want to click article and was unsure of stats he used.

[Soxfest]

Of course because like him, Theo and Jed are smarter than everyone else and how to properly use the stats.

Dan has always been a Cub boy and always rips Sox like clockwork. No matter what Sox do it is never going to be good enough compared to the chosen one on the Northside. Never liked Dan B smug ass never will.

Edited May 8, 2014 by Soxfest

[Y2Jimmy0]

Dan has always been a Cub boy and always rips Sox like clockwork. No matter what Sox do it is never going to be good enough compared to the chosen one on the Northside. Never liked Dan B smug ass never will.

 

 

Umm Dan Bernstein is a White Sox fan.

[flavum]

Umm Dan Bernstein is a White Sox fan.

 

He grew up as a Sox fan. He's more of a Dan Bernstein fan now.

Edited May 8, 2014 by flavum

[Soxfest]

Umm Dan Bernstein is a White Sox fan.

He says he is yet rips Sox every chance he gets. His comments on the radio all these years would say otherwise, he may have grew up one as a kid as a adult he is hardly a Sox fan.

Edited May 8, 2014 by Soxfest

[flavum]

He says he is yet rips Sox every chance he gets. His comments on the radio all these years would say otherwise, he may have grew up one as a kid as a adult he is hardly a Sox fan.

 

He's a numbers fan. He can go "meatball" for the Bears and Bulls, but when it comes to baseball, he has to be the smartest one in the room, just like a lot of baseball fans these days. And obviously he has a crush on Theo, so he's rooting for their plan to work.

[IlliniKrush]

He says he is yet rips Sox every chance he gets. His comments on the radio all these years would say otherwise, he may have grew up one as a kid as a adult he is hardly a Sox fan.

You're just wrong here, you don't listen to him much if you actually thought he was a Cubs fan. He's a Sox fan. You don't think the Sox have deserved to be criticized the past 8 years? Come on already. He's more than fair with that.

 

He also rips the Cubs plenty.

[Soxfest]

You're just wrong here, you don't listen to him much if you actually thought he was a Cubs fan. He's a Sox fan. You don't think the Sox have deserved to be criticized the past 8 years? Come on already. He's more than fair with that.

 

He also rips the Cubs plenty.

I listen plenty since Theo has showed up it has been a love fest from Dan, Theo the man with the plan does no wrong. His positive comments on the Sox have been very few.

[Dick Allen]

. His positive comments on the Sox have been very few.

Sounds like a gamethread, even sometimes during White Sox wins. I used to like Bernstein. I thought he would go national like Greenberg. I think he got too full of himself. If you don't agree with him, you are just dumb. And putting dumb callers on the air just so they can rip into them isn't really riveting radio. Maybe for a little while it was, but it gets old.

Edited May 8, 2014 by Dick Allen

[IlliniKrush]

I listen plenty since Theo has showed up it has been a love fest from Dan, Theo the man with the plan does no wrong. His positive comments on the Sox have been very few.

Sox have deserved very few positive comments. Did you miss 2013?

 

Theo has a plan. And it's a logical plan based on where they were at. May or may not work, but it's 100x better than anything they've been doing for years. If I was a Cubs fan, I'd be behind the plan as well. At least they have some sort of direction. Guess he can't be objective about things. Just blindly support the Sox and boo the Cubs.

 

He also had positive comments about the Sox offseason now that there's a plan there, too.

[Soxfest]

Sox have deserved very few positive comments. Did you miss 2013?

 

Theo has a plan. And it's a logical plan based on where they were at. May or may not work, but it's 100x better than anything they've been doing for years. If I was a Cubs fan, I'd be behind the plan as well. At least they have some sort of direction. Guess he can't be objective about things. Just blindly support the Sox and boo the Cubs.

 

He also had positive comments about the Sox offseason now that there's a plan there, too.

Who said it was about 2013? I said since Theo arrived and that was in 2011. Lord Theo does no wrong, Sox do very little right says the King Dan.

Edited May 8, 2014 by Soxfest

[StrangeSox]

Bernstein likes Theo's approach. That doesn't make him a Cubs fan or mean that he isn't or can't be a White Sox fan.

[Dick Allen]

Bernstein likes Theo's approach. That doesn't make him a Cubs fan or mean that he isn't or can't be a White Sox fan.

I'd love him to explain the Edwin Jackson signing.

[Soxfest]

I'd love him to explain the Edwin Jackson signing.

That signing made zero sense from day 1. It is Lord Theo so it's ok.

[IlliniKrush]

Bernstein likes Theo's approach. That doesn't make him a Cubs fan or mean that he isn't or can't be a White Sox fan.

Exactly. Can't be objective.

[southsider2k5]

He says he is yet rips Sox every chance he gets. His comments on the radio all these years would say otherwise, he may have grew up one as a kid as a adult he is hardly a Sox fan.

 

He isn't a fan of anyone but his ratings. He is a highly paid troll that makes money off of upsetting people into calling his show to listen to what stupid thing gets said next. Don't fall for the act.

[IlliniKrush]

He isn't a fan of anyone but his ratings. He is a highly paid troll that makes money off of upsetting people into calling his show to listen to what stupid thing gets said next. Don't fall for the act.

You never listen to him, how would you know? How can you comment on something when you don't know what's said?

[Soxfest]

He isn't a fan of anyone but his ratings. He is a highly paid troll that makes money off of upsetting people into calling his show to listen to what stupid thing gets said next. Don't fall for the act.

I never fell for his act. You can see by my post I am no fan of his nonsense as some in this thread are.

[Kyyle23]

You never listen to him, how would you know? How can you comment on something when you don't know what's said?

 

i listen to him, and a lot of it is true. It really is sad to me that he had CBS turn off the comments sections on his articles, and it really bothers me when he hides behind "I dont care what you say, we get ratings so you dont matter"

 

He can be funny, he can be informative, but unfortunately he has started to lean on the very idealogy that he hates, meatball thinking. He wants to make a large argumentative statement, and then refuse to allow the argument to happen. Unfortunately there is absolutely no competition to push him to be better than that, because I believe he can be(and has been) better than that.

[Jake]

I skipped some of the conversation, but the key things to think about regarding "clutch" are definitional.

 

If Abreu is a 1.000 OPS hitter in a neutral situation, is he a choker when his OPS is .850 in the clutch? What if he's at 1.000 OPS?

 

If Leury is a .550 OPS hitter normally and .700 OPS in the clutch, is he a really clutch hitter?

 

There's your first problem. When defining clutch, are we measuring a hitter against himself or against the league? Chances are, even if Abreu was "not clutch" insofar as he was a significantly worse hitter than he normally is in clutch situations, he'd still be the best choice in a clutch situation.

 

The other big problem in terms of definitions is deciding what constitutes a clutch situation. Often, "late and close" is used as a surrogate for clutch spots. This means 7th or later, batting team is ahead by one run, tied, or losing by an amount such that the tying run is at least on deck. Of course, you wouldn't say an Abreu strikeout to lead off the 7th of a game when we're losing by 1 constitutes a choke. Sometimes you could argue it was productive if his presence caused the team to use a righty against Dunn. Anyways, we often see that a play becomes clutch after the fact; there was no particular pressure to succeed in this hypothetical situation, but if he hit a bomb we'd probably label it an example of his acumen in the clutch.

 

RISP is another surrogate, but suffers from some of the same pitfalls. Do we start patting Tyler Flowers on the back for a bloop single with nobody out and the bases loaded in the second inning? So clutch! Then again, maybe that is clutch. It's more clutch than most other singles.

 

If you narrow the definition of clutch too much, you end up making all claims about the clutch borderline unfalsifiable. PK is the most clutch hitter in history because he hits grand slams 100% of the time that he bats with the bases loaded in the World Series. You get the idea. You work with unbelievably small sample sizes and you start to fine tune your definition to prove your hypothesis rather than coming up with an idea of clutch and seeing if the data confirms your beliefs or not.

 

 

 

[IlliniKrush]

i listen to him, and a lot of it is true. It really is sad to me that he had CBS turn off the comments sections on his articles, and it really bothers me when he hides behind "I dont care what you say, we get ratings so you dont matter"

 

He can be funny, he can be informative, but unfortunately he has started to lean on the very idealogy that he hates, meatball thinking. He wants to make a large argumentative statement, and then refuse to allow the argument to happen. Unfortunately there is absolutely no competition to push him to be better than that, because I believe he can be(and has been) better than that.

I see your point, I just laugh at people that talk about B and B like it's the worst thing ever, yet somehow they never listen, never have listened, but know everything that is said on the show, good bad or indifferent.

 

So they take their hate of Bernstein, and any opinion or anything he ever says, is wrong. As is shown with this silly "OMG HE'S A CUBS FAN BECAUSE HE SAID A NICE THING ABOUT THEO" thing we have going on right now.

[Kyyle23]

I see your point, I just laugh at people that talk about B and B like it's the worst thing ever, yet somehow they never listen, never have listened, but know everything that is said on the show, good bad or indifferent.

 

So they take their hate of Bernstein, and any opinion or anything he ever says, is wrong. As is shown with this silly "OMG HE'S A CUBS FAN BECAUSE HE SAID A NICE THING ABOUT THEO" thing we have going on right now.

 

It isnt the worst thing ever. I just feel it could be so much better, and they have relaxed because they are pretty much undisputed. And the article he wrote, to me at least, is bothersome because it really is meant to troll, and I think he could be better than that.