The Yanks Are Losing Because Derek Jeter Is Not Coming Through When It Counts. (Believe it).
After watching a bunch of Yankees games this year (I do revel in their misery), I couldn't help but notice that Derek Jeter has come up at or near the end of games and not done anything. After watching him fly out against the Angels on Sunday down one with two outs and runners on 2nd and third it really got me thinking: When's the last time Jeter did anything clutch? I mean, the guy is Captain Clutch, right? Well, you'd be surprised. Allow me to rewind for a bit....
You know you've reached certain level of respect when the fellas at the Red Sox Megablog SOSH create a nickname in your honor. For Jeter, it's "CI" (Captain Intangibles). This is in reference to the frustrating argument that Jeter is great beyond the numbers and there is no statistical category that is able to capture his true value. Yanks fans for years have argued that Jeter is "clutch" and makes "big plays" and so on and so forth. You'll get no argument from me that Jeter is a great player and is a surefire hall of famer, but the maddening part of the argument is that there really is no way to determine his value (and don't give me VORP. That is a BS stat that I will get to some time later this summer). Well, the statmeisters came up with a stat called "close and late" that is meant to capture the batting splits of those players that step up in big moments. It is defined as follows:
Close And Late - results in the 7th inning or later with the batting team either ahead by one run, tied or with the potential tying run at least on deck.Surely Jeter would excel in this category. Jeter should dominate this stat with his intangible clutchness (though the stat itself was likely created in the wake of the evaluation of David Ortiz's MVP value). Well, not really. Over the last three years, Jeter's overall average is .315 while his average in close and late situations is .291. Still respectable but it doesn't really bespeak of "clutch" in the sense that if Jeter's "clutchness" was what set him apart from other players, he should improve when the going gets tough. Well in fact, in the last 6 seasons (including the current season), Jeter has never had a close and late average higher than his batting average and his K percentage goes up about 10% in close and late situations. It should also be noted that in that same time period he has been voted in the top 25 of the MVP voting four of those years (and likely will again this year). Close and late doesn't really cover the exact gamut of the type of clutchness I'm looking for, so I did some digging of my own to figure out what's been going on with him this year. Well, take a look see:
In 2007, I found that Derek Jeter has come up in the 8th inning or later while representing the tying (or winning) run 19 times. In those 19 at bats, he has 3 hits and 1 RBI. With the three walks he's accumulated in those plate appearances, that's about a .185 avg (his "close and late" average this year is .296 and he has 1 RBI in that split as well). That's not very good for someone so clutch. So just how important is that? Well, if he had four more hits in those situations prior to tonight's game (which they just lost by one run, again), they win four of those games and are 25-24 and only 8.5 back. Jeter's lack of clutch is losing them games. A five game differential (assuming one of those was against the Sox) is the difference between a train wreck and a 3 car pile up. The Captain may be the best hitter in that lineup right now (Posada clearly can't keep this up), but he is doing them no favors when it really counts.
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4 comments:
wow, that's more than double Big Papi's .125 "close and late" -- http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/splits?playerId=3748
Very good. And that matters because...?
It matters because it proves your stats are bullshit. Using your own indicia of "clutch," Papi f-ing blows, but you (and I) know that's not true.
My point was that the legendary "clutch" Jeter is not so clutch and the Yanks this year need him to be. If you want to say that Ortiz hasn't been clutch this year, you're right. The difference is that the Yanks NEED clutch Jeter and the Sox don't even need Ortiz in their lineup to win. Essentially, if Jeter was as clutch as everyone claims (or even if he hit as well as he does in normal situations), the Yanks would have won more games by now. Because he is not, they are losing close games. It has nothing to do with Ortiz, but if you want to go that route....
On a larger scale, Ortiz's "close and late" average is higher than his overall average for every year he has played for the Sox. He has more clutch (in terms of stats) in his chinstrap beard than Jeter does. That's not the point I was making, but I did kinda hint at it. I'm happy to create an entire post comparing those two averages.
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