If he does it over a short period of time, he's the beneficiary of a small sample size. If he does it over a 10 year career, he's the Tooth Fairy.

You are presuming, before he gets out of AAA, that you have pre-selected him as the guy to examine for clutch-i-ness.

What we actually have is thousands and thousands of players who are done, then going back after the fact to identify the outliers. That isn't how it works. How many outliers should we expect, and did we get a statistically significant number of "clutch" players more than what we'd expect from random chance?

No. I'm not wrong.

The fact that you think numbers define baseball and think you're some kind of expert doesn't make your beliefs true.

And you can't tell me that, when certain players come up to the plate, you don't have more confidence than when certain other players come up, even if the numbers suggest they have an equal chance to succeed.

If you do, I don't believe you.

I doubt you'd find a 20 point difference either way. To milk's point, even if you did, .020 is one additional hit every 50 at bats. That is pretty much indistinguishable to the naked eye. You have to rely on statistics to flush out that type of information.

In a 10 year career, you're talking about 5,000 or so at bats. Of those at bats, maybe 500-1000 of them would qualify as being in a clutch situation depending on your parameters. In essence, you're talking about an additional 1-2 hits per year in these situations compared to an average player. If you didn't watch, essentially, every game of baseball played by every team for 10 years, your observation would be completely useless without statistics, as missing a single hit would render the entire season's results meaningless. Even then, you'd have to somehow be able to mentally catalog the difference between being 14-50 and 15-50 over the course of a season and then log that understanding for a decade.

Simply put, it can not be discerned by being "observed". It can only be measured.

Some people get nervous when flying even though they know that they are safer in an airplane than they are in a car. That's human nature.

That really isn't a relevant analogy.

But, just for argument's sake, what are the chances of surviving a plane crash, and how does that compare to the chances of surviving a vehicle accident?

well put, probably better than my effort, both posts.

Statistics can't account for why people believe in weird things.

The crash doesn't really matter. I'm more likely to survive getting lost while walking down Prospect at night than I am having my home hit by a tactical nuclear strike, but I worry less about my house being hit by a nuke because it is far less likely to ever occur.

Could your analogies be more off base?

You've reached "point at the dumb guy and laugh" status. I could point out that the tooth fairy doesn't exist and point to the fact that she has made exactly zero appearances, but you would accuse me of relying too heavily on stats.

You can do whatever the hell you want.

I have a better chance of dying in a plane crash than of getting hit by a tactical nuclear strike, and I haven't flown in years.

I don't worry about either.

But I do watch baseball.

OK milk try this one. If a bear shits in the woods at the same time Billy Butler doubles off the base of the wall with no one on base, down 1, then fails to score on a bloop single to right... but then hits a solo homer later in the game when down 2, while dung beatles consume the bears feces and the Royals lose... does anyone at ESPN notice?

Did it happen in New York or Boston?

LOL... well if it did ESPN would obviously notice. Lets say it happened in Seattle. On a Tuesday night.