Choke-i-ness

Nothing cleanses the pallet more than a couple of well played games against the Spanks.  A 7-0 drubbing on Thursday.  A solid 6-4 victory on Independence Day.  And a frustrating but not out-of-reach squeaker yesterday.

And of course, if the Yankees are being beat, its time for someone in the front office to mouth off.  This time, it's Brian Cashman:

"One thing this same offense did last year was know how to score runs, but this year, for some reason, we don't know how to score...We're dreadful with runners in scoring position.  It's almost like we've lost our way, for some reason, in this category."

Cashman needs to revisit the stats.  With two outs and runners in scoring position, the 2007 Yankees hit .272 with a .357 OBP and a 106 OPS+.  In identical situations this season, the Yankees are hitting .265 with a .362 OBP and a 109 OPS+.  In other words, the two teams are virtually identical in "clutch" situations, with a slight edge to the more recent vintage.

Part of the reason that the 2007 Spankees may have had the superficial appearance of being more clutch is that they were simply better.  They had a higher OBP (.366 to .342) and a higher OPS+ (118 to 105).  

Last season's Spanks also hit in more clutch situations.  The 2007 Yankees had an average of 4.7 clutch AB per game compared with 4.4 clutch ABs per game so far for this season's club.  That may not seem like a whole bunch, but over the course of a 162 game season, it adds an additional 48.6 PAs, roughly 12.8 runs.

The bottom line - the better you are, the more clutch situations you create and the better you perform in those situations.  Contra Cashman, the 2008 Yankees aren't chokers, they simply aren't as good.   

Cashman's belief in the mystical power of the clutch, yet another reason why "In Theo We Trust."

Team Clutch

Entertaining come from behind win last night.  If you combine that with Youk's extra inning smash over the weekend, the Sox have had a flair for the dramatic recently.  

During the postgame, Caron and Eckersley were making a big deal about how this is already the nineteenth come from behind victory for the Sox this season.  Impressive, sure, but is this necessarily a good thing?  We can all enjoy the eighth inning mojo of Sweet Caroline, but if your team is routinely playing catch up it usually means (a) you aren't very good in the first place and (b) at some point, your luck will run out and you will regress to the mean (I am looking at you Tampa Bay).  

Sabermetric types claim to have refuted the notion that players might be "clutch", but what about teams?  Are certain teams more prone to the come from behind than others and does this correlate with overall talent / home field advantage / chicken sacrifices to Jobu?

Other random observations:

-  Despite his blurred vision, Youk makes a late appearance as a defensive replacement.  That guy is so clutchy.

-  Eric Byrnes' porn stache makes a late disappearance.

-  Expandicate your vocabulary:  "molinas" and "the moyer effect".