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April 18, 2008

How's A-Rod Doing In The Clutch This Year?

So far, this year, Alex has been terrible in the "clutch." But, there's only been 12 such Plate Appearances (PA) on him to look at here. Some career "clutch" situational splits for Alex Rodriguez via Baseball-Reference.com -

2008		PA	BA	OBP	SLG	BAbip   sOPS+
High Lvrge	12	.167	.167	.250	.286	 14  
Medium Lvrge	30	.259	.333	.481	.300	122  
Low Lvrge	31	.414	.452	.793	.409	228  
					                     
2007		PA	BA	OBP	SLG	BAbip	sOPS+
High Lvrge	132	.349	.439	.706	.360	196  
Medium Lvrge	312	.328	.433	.660	.333	182  
Low Lvrge	264	.278	.402	.594	.255	164  
					                     
2006		PA	BA	OBP	SLG	BAbip	sOPS+
High Lvrge	150	.273	.367	.500	.300	124  
Medium Lvrge	266	.251	.380	.429	.280	110  
Low Lvrge	258	.338	.419	.627	.387	174  
					                     
2005		PA	BA	OBP	SLG	BAbip	sOPS+
High Lvrge	131	.268	.366	.509	.291	130  
Medium Lvrge	280	.345	.454	.629	.394	185  
Low Lvrge	304	.322	.414	.636	.332	180  
					                     
2004		PA	BA	OBP	SLG	BAbip	sOPS+
High Lvrge	126	.314	.405	.559	.329	152  
Medium Lvrge	249	.310	.398	.551	.329	144  
Low Lvrge	323	.258	.347	.466	.283	115

Lvrge = Game importance of the PA.
BAbip = Batting Average on balls in play.
sOPS+ = OPS+ of this split relative to the major league OPS for this split.

Check out those sOPS+ marks for High Leverage situations with 2008 being through last night:

sOPS+	Year
196	2007
152	2004
130	2005
124	2006
014	2008

Granted, again, it's a small sample size for 2008. But, at this pace, 2008 looks to be, at least, as "un-clutch" a season for A-Rod as 2006. Then again, it is important to stress that an sOPS+ of 124 in High Leverage situations in 2006 still means Alex was above average in those situations. It's just that he's not as "clutch" as he was in 2005, 2004, and 2007.

Posted by Steve Lombardi at April 18, 2008 02:43 PM

Comments

Steve, thanks for pulling all that together. Appreciate the time and effort.

Could you please post this again in about a month? It's just not statistically significant right now based on the sample size.

A-Rod could just as easily be hitting .700 in high leverage situations this early in the season, and we shouldn't take that number too seriously, either.

Posted by: yankees76 [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 18, 2008 03:35 PM