Sunday, July 7, 2013

How Well Did Carl Yastrzemski Hit In Clutch Situations During September And October Of 1967?

Very well, as you will see in the table below. This does not include World Series games. I used the Baseball Reference Play Index. My definition of Close and Late here is from the 7th inning on with the batting team ahead by 1, tied or behind by 1.

Clutch Stats For Sept/Oct 1967


Notice how well he hit in the clutch late in the season, even compared to his great full-season stats. He did not make a habit, though, of exceeding his normal performance by so much in the clutch during his entire career. The next table shows this. But we can see that he certainly did not let the pressure of a very tight pennant race get to him.

Clutch Stats For Entire Career



2 comments:

David said...

Very interesting... on the "entire career" grid, the thing that stands out to me most is the OBP column in the RISP row. I assume that it's basically just putting Yaz on first rather than having him hit that makes that one look so out-of-line with the rest of the stats (with that same thing applying for the Runners on Base row, but not occurring with the bases loaded, accounting for the 16-point difference). Does that seem about right to you?

Cyril Morong said...

Thanks for dropping by and commenting.

You are probably right. If you look at his career splits, it seems like he got IBBs alot more frequently with RISP than ROB

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=yastrca01&year=Career&t=b

But that may be normal baseball strategy and not unique to Yaz