As the Stros’ hitters continue to strand baserunners by the dozens, most of you are undoubtedly having to endure comments on the radio and elsewhere such as “the Stros are not good at hitting in the clutch” or they “are not good at situational hitting.”
As this hilarious Fire Joe Morgan post explains, those comments are mostly blather. Extensive statistical analysis of baseball statistics over the years has shown that there is rarely any meaningful difference between a hitter’s performance in “clutch” versus “non-clutch” situations. Rather, a combination of bad luck and weak overall hitting are the true reasons why teams go through periods such as the Stros are enduring now in which they leave a large number of runners on base.
The fact that the Stros are 10th out of the 16 National League clubs in both on-base average and slugging percentage has much more to do with the Stros leaving a large number of runners on base than any lack of “clutch hitting.” By the way, after Sunday’s loss, that $100 million off-season acquisition, slugger Carlos Lee, has generated 5 fewer runs than a merely average National League hitter would have created using the same number of outs as Lee has made so far this season, a .290 on-base average and a paltry .738 OPS.