It's a word you hear a lot about in discussions of athletics. It's a given among most sports fans and commentators that some performers are clutch and some aren't. Does anyone dispute that Michael Jordan was clutch? Does anyone dispute that John Elway was clutch? We all remember those game-winning shots and game-winning 4th quarter drives. Those were clutch, right? Ron Guidry's 26 wins in 30 September pennant race starts? That's gotta be clutch, doesn't it? And does anyone really dispute that Derek Jeter is clutch?

Well, yes, some people do dispute that Derek Jeter is clutch. And, frankly, they make some pretty good points. They correctly caution us that we should be careful about placing too much emphasis on "the flip" in '01 in the ALDS against the A's, or the walk-off home run in '01 against the D'backs in game 4 of the 2001 World Series. And they're right about relying on anecdotalism, or isolated instances of "clutch plays", or, more generally, very small sample sets. Those may have been clutch plays, but do they necessarily make Derek Jeter a clutch player? They point out that Derek Jeter in the post-season is pretty much like Derek Jeter in the regular season - almost identical batting average, OPS, and just a little bit more HR power in Oct/Nov than in April to September. Jeter's not being "clutch", they argue; he's merely being Jeter.

Reggie Jackson? Surely a .755 slugging average across five World Series establishes beyond question Reggie's clutch bona fides, right? Well, what about those 11 ALCS series, the skeptics ask. Those were big games, too, and Reggie slugged .380 and had an OBP under .300.

Here's Bill James on the subject of "clutch":

"The prominence of clutch performance as an element in player ratings can be attributed to three factors: (1) Hero worship journalism; (2) Self-aggrandizement by athletes, particularly retired athletes serving as TV announcers; (3) The fact that we all need, at times, to escape the implications of our logic."

Bill then cites ex-athletes like Joe Morgan, Ray Knight and Reggie Jackson as commentators who have a tendency to cast every contest as a "test of character, determination, and fortitude."

"My attitude toward this can probably be inferred from my tone. I do not believe that athletes are better people than the rest of us, I do not believe that athletic contests are tests of character, and I do not believe that there is any such thing as an ability to perform in clutch situations. It's just a lot of poppycock."

While rejecting the notion of an ability to perform in the clutch, however, Bill agrees that certain players have performed so well in clutch situations, for whatever reason, that they deserve credit for it and extra consideration when assessing their historical standing.

Bill contrasts Don Drysdale and Bob Gibson to illustrate his point. Bill cites Gibson's well-known big-game reputation, his tremendous performance down the stretch in the 1964 NL pennant race, and his remarkable World Series record (7-2, seven straight wins, two game 7 victories, 2 World Series MVPs) and contrasts Gibson's clutch achievements with Drysdale's pennant race performances.

"This is an absolute fact that doesn't change depending on how you feel about it: Don Drysdale started 13 games in his career in the heat of the pennant race against the team the Dodgers were trying to beat - and never won. Not even once. He never pitched particularly well without winning; 0 for 13.*

"I don't believe that this reflects a character failing on Drysdale's part. I think it's just something that happened. Sometimes he had been overworked; sometimes maybe a pitch or two got away from him. Sometimes you make good pitches and get beat. If there was a big game next week, I'd as soon have Drysdale pitching for me as anybody else.

"Nonetheless, it did happen; he did, in general, pitch poorly in pennant races (with some exceptions), and he did repeatedly fail to beat the Dodger's kep opponent in the heat of the pennant race. In rating Drysdale's career, is this something that should be ignored, or something that should be considered?"

Bill answers his own question directly and succinctly, stating "if a player really does come through in big games or fail in big games, I don't think we can afford to ignore that."

Bill then argues that there are, in his opinion, about 20 players who should be rated up or down "a little bit" because of their clutch performances. In addition to Drysdale and Gibson, Bill mentions five other players for whom the clutch factor would figure in Bill's analysis: Yogi Berra, Joe Carter, George Brett, Steve Garvey and Reggie Jackson. Although Bill doesn't say so, I think it's fairly clear that each of these five would be uprated by Bill for clutch performance. But Bill doesn't explain why, and it's really not clear to me what Bill's methodology was in arriving at these five examples. If it's post-season performance (and I believe that is what Bill primarily relied on) then it should be noted that none of these players have aggregate post-season numbers that put them among the all-time post-season performers (with the possible exception of Reggie Jackson). And each of them have very notable chinks in their post-season records. The point is this: why these guys but not Lou Gehrig? Henry Aaron? Lou Brock? Allie Reynolds? Lefty Gomez? Babe Ruth? Mickey Mantle?

The fact is that there were two different Yogi Berras in the World Series - the one that hit .188 in his first five World Series and the one that was a fire-breathing monster in the next 7 Series in which he played. Gehrig and Ruth virtually never had a poor World Series - why don't they deserve Bill's uprate?

Why Joe Carter? His aggregate post-season numbers are even weaker than his generally mediocre regular season numbers. And he only played in five post-season series. What about Lou Brock and Henry Aaron, each of whom may have played in only three post-season series but put up numbers that are off the charts? And if it's Carter's World Series winning walk-off HR in the '93 WS that qualifies as a clutch uprate for Bill, then what about Bill Mazeroski, whose HR to win the classic 7 game Series in 1960 is even bigger than Carter's walk-off, and whose aggregate post-season numbers are far better than Carter's? Or what about Mantle, who hit more hugely consequential World Series HRs than anyone?

Well, Bill himself pointed out that the subject of clutch performance is inevitably very subjective and, as he put it so eloquently, "it's a dangerous area to get into, because when you reach into the bullshit dump, you're not going to come out with a handful of diamonds."

Still, you can't avoid the whole "clutch" debate; it's a classic sports fan subject. And it's a subject that in many ways is an implicit premise of this blog about so-called big-game pitchers. There are some players who were so undeniably great in big games, in tight pennant races, or in post-season competition that you have to take notice. And in the final analysis, I suppose I don't care if these performances were the result of some innate clutch gene, or some identifiable super-ability in the clutch. These performances occurred, they took place in the biggest games on the biggest stage, and the implications for their team and for baseball history were profound. So I'm with Bill, here: I don't think we can afford to ignore that.
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* Bill, although generally correct about Drysdale's conspicuously poor record in September against other contenders, is simply wrong in his claim that Drysdale never won such a game. Drysdale beat the Giants on September 19, 1959 to draw the Dodgers even with the Giants with six games to go, pitching six innings, giving up one unearned run and striking out 8; and Drysdale beat the Pirates on September 15, 1966 to put the Dodgers up by 2.5 games over the Pirates with 17 games to go, going 8.2 innings and giving up 5 hits and 3 runs.