Following up on our discussion of professionalism (in which Jonathan Chait argued that “the definition of a professional career track” requires pay differentials and the chance to get fired, and I argued the opposite, that a lot of people go into professional careers specifically because of the job security), Austin Frakt pointed me to this description of professionalism from Go master Toshiro Kageyama.
This in turn reminds me of a remark of Bill James when he explained lack of surprise that clutch hitting does not show up in the data. He wrote that the underlying idea of clutch hitting is that a player will play particuarly well in an important situation where the game or the season is on the line. But, James pointed out, these guys are pros, and the true sign of a professional is that he can always stay concentrated.
This argument applies particuarly for hitting, maybe less so for pitching, where a pitcher can’t necessarily throw his hardest for 100 pitches in a game.
“Clutch hitting” may be the ability to not drop below one’s average success rate in the face of particularly motivated pitchers who have been saving their “best stuff” for the clutch situations….
(Maybe James ruled that out – I wouldn’t know)
David Brooks wrote a very nice piece on “pitching with purpose” for baseball opening day in 2008.
“A pitcher shouldn’t judge himself by how the batters hit his pitches, but instead by whether he threw the pitch he wanted to throw.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/opinion/01brooks.html?ref=davidbrooks
I haven’t seen a study of clutch hitting that had much statistical power. They were all concerned with identifying specific clutch hitters, and there isn’t much data for any one hitter. One thing that might have enough power would be a comprehensive study that evaluated the difference of the observed variance vs. the expected variance in some measure of hitting proficiency for all batters.
Andrew,
Check this out:
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/01/12/tebow-is-americas-most-popular-pro-athlete-according-to-45-people/
[...] Cantor points to this poll estimating rifle-armed QB Tim Tebow as America’s favorite pro athlete: In an [...]