I was speaking recently to another Mets blogger, and the topic of Justin Turner came up. After being unsurprised that a sabermetrician like myself prefers Josh Satin to Turner, he said that he liked Turner because, “Justin Turner is a clutch player.”

“There are certain players who are just better in clutch situations, you can’t deny that,” another person chimed in.

Before I knew it, I was by myself debating against a dozen other people trying to make the case that player’s performance does not change in high leverage situations.

Before we go any further, let’s establish a couple of things first. Clutch performances exist. On any given night, Justin Turner can in fact come through with a big hit in a high leverage situation. So can any other player in Major League Baseball. That’s the beauty of baseball. Any given player can come through in a clutch situation on any given day. There’s just no such thing as a player that is better in the clutch than he is in any other situation.

“The correlation between past and current clutch performance is .01, with a standard deviation of .07,” observed David Grabiner in The Sabermetric Manifesto, “In other words, there isn’t a significant ability in clutch hitting; if there were, the same players would be good clutch hitters every year.”

To demonstrate this, Baseball Prospectus’ Joe Sheehan suggests picking five players at random and comparing their splits in clutch situations and seeing how wildly they fluctuate from year to year. Thanks to Fangraphs’ Clutch statistic, it is simple to do this, so let’s compare Justin Turner, Jordany Valdespin, and Derek Jeter to a player regarded as “unclutch”, Alex Rodriguez, and the best hitter in baseball, Miguel Cabrera.

Player 2010 Clutch 2011 Clutch 2012 Clutch 2013 Clutch Career Clutch Playoff Clutch Justin Turner 0.06 1.42 0.42 -0.26 1.68 N/A Jordany Valdespin N/A N/A 0.08 -0.03 0.14 N/A Derek Jeter -0.4 0.04 -0.23 N/A 1.16 -1.45 Alex Rodriguez 1.44 -1.03 -0.51 N/A -8.22 -0.45 Miguel Cabrera 0.95 1.4 -1.45 -0.02 -1.5 0.19

A few things jump out at you right away:

1. Turner was in fact a great performer in clutch situations in 2011, but hasn’t been nearly as good the last two seasons.

2. The wild variation in Cabrera and Rodriguez’s clutch scores the past few years.

3. Rodriguez has been better in clutch playoff situations than Jeter.

4. Valdespin has been average in clutch situations.

What this all tells us is that the perceived “clutchness” of a player is something that is largely determined by the media. It makes for a nice story that a player can kick it into another gear in high leverage situations, and as fans, we eat it up. We like the notion that a player can reach down inside himself and summon a little extra something to come through because he has “the will to win.”

But it’s just not true, and deep down inside we all know it, but we like to believe anyway.

It’s not just the statistics that prove it. If we strip our biases and watch the games objectively, we’ll see Derek Jeter or Justin Turner not come through in the clutch, and we’ll see guys who are “unclutch” come through in the same scenarios.

Therein lies the beauty of baseball; any given player can do something extraordinary on any given day.

Who could ask for more than that?

Joe Vasile is a play-by-play announcer and radio host. Follow him on Twitter here and check out his website.

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