The Clutchest Players So Far This Season

Baseball fans love to argue out over which players perform best in the clutch. Let's dive into the numbers.

You know that feeling you get when you watch a tight, tense baseball game? When your team is down by two runs and rallying to tie the game? Or when your team has a two-run lead, but it feels precarious because the opposing team has one man on and one of the best hitters at the plate?

Imagine it’s a postseason game. You’re sitting on the couch and with each pitch, your body tenses until you find yourself in curled into a ball. You feel like you’re on a rollercoaster—there’s a pit in your stomach but you’re anticipating an exhilarating high when your team comes through with the win.

If you could diagram your feelings, it might look something like this.

This FanGraphs Win Expectancy chart shows the ebb and flow of Wednesday’s game between the Diamondbacks and the Phillies at Citizen Bank Ballpark in Philadelphia. The rollercoaster-like drawing at the top tracks how each event in the game adds to one team’s probability of winning the game. As noted by the team names on the right side of the chart, the top half shows the probability of the Phillies winning the game and the bottom half shows the probability of the Diamondbacks winning the game.

The chart shows that, from the beginning, the Diamondbacks had a high probability of winning the game. That is, until Trea Turner hit a two-out, two-run home run to tie the game at 5-5 in the bottom of the 9th inning.

That red dot between the 9th and 10th innings, just over the line into Phillies territory, is the exact moment when Turner hit the home run. That was the first time all game when the win expectancy favored the Phillies. When the Phillies scored in the bottom of the 10th to win the game, the win expectancy line shot up to 100% in the Phillies portion of the chart.

Under the Win Expectancy chart is the Leverage Index chart. Leverage Index measures the possible swing in win probability at every moment of a baseball game, taking into account the inning, the score, the number of outs, and the number of runners on base. FanGraphs explains:

You take the current base-out state, inning, and score and you find the possible changes in Win Expectancy that could occur during this particular plate appearance. Then you multiple those potential changes by the odds of that potential change occurring, add them up, and divide by the average potential swing in WE to get the Leverage Index.

As you can see, the Leverage Index went way up as the game progressed toward the 9th & 10th innings and the Phillies were rallying to tie and then win the game. As a fan, you already feel this—the leverage heats up as the game gets closer to its conclusion and the score differential is small or there’s none at all.

FanGraphs does have a “clutch” statistic, but that measures whether a player performs better in high leverage situations than he performs overall. So, for example, Aaron Judge has a “clutch” rating for the season of 0.17, which means that Judge—who is batting .294/.406/.643 heading into Thursday’s action—is performing at that level in high, low and medium leverage situations throughout a game. Jorge Soler, on the other hand, has a 1.45 “clutch” rating this season, which means Soler is coming through for the Marlins in the most important game situations more frequently than he does in low and medium leverage points in the game.

When fans talk about whether a player is clutch or whether he got a clutch hit, we’re describing whether the player got the job done in a high leverage situation—regardless of how well that player performs otherwise. That’s captured by FanGraphs as Win Probability Added. FanGraphs explains:

During each plate appearance, the inning, score, or base-out state changes from the beginning to the end, which leads to a change in Win Expectancy. That change is assigned to both the pitcher and batter (inversely). The sum of a player’s individual WPA generates their WPA for the season.

If a batter flies out on the first pitch of the game, the home team’s WE goes up from 50% to about 52%. This means that the pitcher who induced the out gets a WPA of +0.02 and the batter gets a WPA of -0.02.

So, which position players and which pitchers have accumulated the most Win Probability Added so far this season in each league? Let’s take a look.

National League

Before I reveal the clutchest players this season in the National League, note that WPA is descriptive only. WPAtells you only what a player has done, but does not predict whether a player will continue to execute for his team in high leverage situations.

Here are the top 5 NL positions players in WPA for games completed through April 30.

And here’s the top 5 WPA list for games from May 1 through May 24.

Those WPA numbers for Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Jorge Soler are incredible for a 24 day span!

Let’s take a look at the NL pitchers. First, from Opening Day through April 30.

I expected to see at least one, if not more, relievers, because relievers tend to pitch in the highest leverage situations at the end of the game. But often, games are won or lost in the 3rd, 4th, or 5th innings, when the starter is still in the game, and is able to shut down an opposing team’s rally. Starters also pitch more innings, so they have more opportunity to rack up WPA stats

We see the same pattern for games played May 1 through May 24. All starting pitchers.

American League

The position player with the highest WPA in games played through April 30 surprised me, because his team did not play well overall at the start of the season.

Yordan Alvarez may have kept the Astros alive single handedly in the first month of the season.

The offensive heroes in the AL changed in May.

Now let’s look at the AL pitchers who racked up the highest WPA in the first month, through April 30. No surprise at the top.

We see only one repeat AL pitcher on the WPA leaderboard for May 1 through May 24. No wonder his team has the best record in baseball.

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