Bayrod?

With today being an off-day and Pirate fans recovering from two days of Joe Randa in the cleanup spot, I think it's finally time. "Time for what?" some of you are asking, while some of you probably already know. This summer, the Pirates best player has been branded by some as a choker in clutch situations. I've tried to defend him, but I've noticed that he's given me very little opportunity to do so. I've avoided the situation because I didn't want to do it unless I had time to reason it all out. But finally, I'm going to address the two-fold question, 1.) Is Jason Bay clutch? and 2.) Does whether he's clutch or not matter?

As I've said, I've been very loathe to even touch the situation until know. It was partly because of the large amount of reseach I knew I'd have to do, but it's also partly because of the very origin of Bay's nickname, A-Rod. Yankee fans have managed to do something I never thought I'd be capable of, feeling bad for a guy that's pretty much univerally loathed. In the three years prior to this year (two of them as Yankees), Rodriguez had a .945 OPS in close and late situations (7th inning or later in a 1 run or tie game, or with the tying run on base, at the plate, or in the on deck circle), almost exactly the same as his regular season OPS (.972). Despite this, Rodriguez came into the season fighting the "not clutch" rep because of a poor performance against the Angels in the ALDS, a series in which no Yankee played particularly well (A-Rod career playoff OPS: .927). He was frequently compared to Derek Jeter, who's numbers paled in comparison to his in just about every way (from 2003-2005 his close and late OPS was .744, DOWN from his overall .835 number in those three seasons and his career playoff OPS is .842, almost the same as his career number, though he is much much better in the Division Series than the LS or World Series... choker). Anyways, A-Rod put more pressure on himself to come through in these situations and failed pretty badly early on, which only increased the fan and media pissing and moaning. It's a sliding scale, handling the actual situations themselves is one thing, but doing it while you're thinking, "I've gotta get a hit because it's a close game and the fans moan about me and if I don't the media won't let me forget about it for a week" is another. We say stuff like that shouldn't affect professional athletes, but it does. What I'm saying is that any struggling Rodriguez has done in clutch situations this year (and they do appear to be there, his close and late OPS is waaay down to .631 this year), they've come because of the added pressure of actually trying to be "clutch" as opposed to simply trying to win games. Because of this, I've left the subject alone when it comes to Bay this year. Not because I think Bay reads the blog or because I think I have such a wide ranging audience, but simply because I don't want to contribute anything at all to a similar situation with Bay. I should mention that I feel dirty for defending A-Rod now (though bashing Jeter is always fun), and I'm done talking about Yankees, I'm simply giving you an idea where I'm coming from.

So let's move along to Bay. Last year in 88 "close and late" at-bats, Bay went .273/.387/.545 with 6 homers and 15 RBIs, scoring 9 runs. Those all match his fullseason numbers almost right on the nose (especially given the rather small sample size) and since Bay was one of the best players in either league last year (his VORP of 72.6 was 5th in the ML last year behind Derek Lee, the aforementioned Rodriguez, Pujols, and David Ortiz and ahead of a hell of a lot of great players) it means that he could not have been not clutch last season. You can expand the definition of clutch to just about anything, since close and late likely doesn't nearly cover it, but Bay's numbers all went up with runners on base last year in comparison to his bases empty numbers. The numbers really don't support any argument that Bay was unclutch last year.

This year it's true that Bay's numbers have gone down in clutch situations. I can't argue that without making myself look stupid. His close and late numbers are very down (.556 OPS with only a .235 SLG in 68 at bats to this point) and his OPS with runners on is .850 this year compared with 1.029 without. I can't ignore those numbers, but I think I can explain them (at least a little bit). Last year in 105 close and late PA's, Bay walked 17 times (16% of the time). This year he's walked 18 times in only 85 close and late PA's (21%) of the time. On the whole, he's walked in 16% of his PAs this year, compared to 13% last year. This seems insignificant, but it generally conveys the idea that Bay is getting pitched to less this year. All hitters, minus Barry Bonds from 2001-2004 (and that doesn't count), have holes in their swings. In Ted Williams' Science of Hitting he talks about how he can't hit a low and away pitch to save his life. Jason Bay is the same way, we all know that he can't hit a low and away pitch that breaks out of the strike zone from right handed pitching. When he's hot, he can foul it off. When he's not, he misses it entirely or pops it up. When he's being pitched around, he's pitched to almost exclusively in that spot with the thinking being that either he'll make an out or he'll walk and Joe Randa or Xavier Nady or whatever comparitive stiff is batting 5th certainly will. There's a reason his on base There's simply no motivation for any pitcher to come anywhere near where Jason Bay can hit the ball in an important situation. There's a reason why his on base percentage is nearly 200 points higher than his batting average in those situations, and I think that's it.

It is true that a great majority of Bay's homers and RBIs (in the vicinity of 70%) have come in the first 6 innings this year. I can't argue with things like that. But it's also true that of his 25 homers, 14 of them have either tied the game or given us the lead (1 tied the game, 13 gave us the lead). Only 7 of his 25 have come with the Pirates down by 3 or more (5 times) or up by 3 or more (2 times). Sure, lots of the homers have come in the early innings, but 1.) runs don't count less if they're scored before the sixth, and 2.) the whole first month of the season we struggled to get out ahead in games. Without breaking the numbers down (because there's no real way to do it), I'd say that except for a few recent exceptions, Bay's numbers late in the game come more from being pitched around than being avoided. Yes, Freddy Sanchez has been walked twice recently to get to Bay late in close games, but that likely has more to do with Bay only hitting 7 homers since his ridiculous streak ended in May, or with Bay only having 22 doubles to this point in the year than with him not being clutch.

So it is true that Bay has been less clutch this year than he was last year, there's no arguing that. But his big differential in close and late stats from last year to this year makes a solid argument that the sample size is too small to do anything with anyways. The existence of clutch has been debated for a long time by people much more sabermetrically oriented than I am. Cyril Morong has written several articles, one exploring the affects on team clutchness on W/L records and one about the affect of clutch hitters themselves on records. In the articles he concludes that non-clutch situations (defined as close and late and not close and late) are more important than clutch situations when it comes to team record and that while there may be clutch players, most of them don't affect a teams' win total any more than would be expected from the regular stats. Baseball Prospectus' Nate Silver dedicated a chapter in this spring's Why Everything You Know About Baseball Is Wrong to the question "Is David Ortiz really Mr. Clutch?" The article was excerpted at ESPN.com this spring and though it leaves a lot of the math out of things, but his basic conclusion is that even though he found more evidence of clutch than most people who've investigated the subject in the past, even the most clutch hitter since 1972, Mark Grace, only won the equivalent of 13 games over 16 with his clutchness. Included in Silver's top 10 of clutchness are Jason Kendall and Jeromy Burnitz.

So we go back to the original questions. Jason Bay might be clutch, or he might not. My own guess is that after his breakout last year, when he performed very well in every concievable situation, he gets pitched to very carefully late in the games given the protection he has in the lineup. The point that we should be concerned about is that his OPS this year is .940 compared to his .961 from last year. That's very, very good whenever those numbers are racked up, and they're going to help win games, no matter when they're racked up. They're even more impressive given that over these past two years he's been protected by the likes of Daryle Ward, Joe Randa, and Jeromy Burnitz more often than not. All I'm saying is that maybe we should give the guy a break and if we're calling him "Bayrod", it should be more of a compliment than anything (actually, he's having a better year than A-Rod, but that's neither here nor there).

Stats from ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, and Baseball Reference. I did some of them on Sunday and some of them today so if some things are a little off, forgive me.