Thanks, Geoff. I mentioned his strikeout rate (as well as home run rate), but didn't go into detail. Even if he's just trying too hard to get the runners in, something is different. Thanks for trying to wake up those that have been blinded by years of playing "fantasy baseball", which has nothing to do with baseball. The game is still played by humans.

Lopez has "flip flopped" almost as much as J. Kerry with his numbers this year, but that's a good thing in this situation. He's always hit well with runners on, but he's hitting well with the bases empty this year as well. Even with his recent mini-slump, he's 1st or 2nd in most offensive categories, and has more total bases than any Mariner.

With this payroll, who is to blame when you have to play Cairo and Bloomquist without anyone being hurt?

What is Ibanez referring to?

"It's been a real difficult road trip," Ibanez said. "A lot of stuff has been going on."

J-Lo is definitely the M's only All-Star this year.

This is all predicated on the belief that different hitters have differing abilities to hit with RISP, which is contradicted by everyone who has ever looked at the question seriously.

You're slicing data until the small sample sizes show you that there are players on the team hitting well or badly and then suggesting that they should be moved in the order to hit with more runners, I think.

And then you're arguing the lineup should be constructed based on who's hitting well lately? Playing the hot hand based on even smaller sample sizes will get you into all kinds of trouble, and no one's really going to argue that Lopez is a better power hitter than Ibanez, even if he's hitting for a .750 slugging percentage over the last 12 AB or whatever.

Correlation is not causation.

This is really poor analysis.

No such thing as clutch hitting? What about clutch pitching? What about clutch shooting? Clutch putting? Clutch kicking?

A huge part of every sport is the mental side, I have to wonder if the person making this argument has ever even played sports.

Am I missing something? I mean, don't you need to have runners in scoring position FIRST if you're going to start evalatuating hitting with RISP?

With a lost season, I think you can give Beltre the chance to turn things around. Even if he's not hitting well, he provides good defense.

Sexson, on the other hand, is a sunk cost. Bad bat, terrible defense.

I still maintain that Beltre has been one of the unluckiest players in baseball this year, but over the last two weeks he's been in free-fall mode. From the first week of May up until the end of May, his approach looked good at the plate (went through the MLB.TV archives again last night) However, since the beginning of June he has looked rather tense at the plate, like Geoff suggests. I'm not a scout, so I can't justifiably say that this is true.

Beltre is a mysterious case (not quite as much as Ichiro, his BA with RISP is well under his career norms). As I went through his ABs over the last two weeks, all I could think (warning: very subjective observation with no scouting to back up) was that he looked a bit tired. That brought me to a (non statistical) question: How often are these players getting days off?

Geoff, there really seems to be a problem getting days off for certain regulars on this team, specifically Beltre, Ichiro, Betancourt, and Ibanez. Has Ichiro even had a day off yet?

Obviously the statistics I use can't tell me how tired/worn down a player is, that's a job for someone like Geoff to figure out. I'm worried that Ichiro's legs are going to fall off by the all-star break because he has to cover for Ibanez so often in the outfield.

Go figure. The three highest paid position players on our team are the biggest flops when it counts the most. It's been obvious. One of my huge concerns is Ichiro --very much underperforming. While I think it was hard not to sign him with his Japanese roots, immense popularity, and baseball skills --the reality has been that he just hasn't performed greatly and is in his own little world. Sexson will be gone next year, and not sure about Beltre --perhaps will be gone depending on his turn around --but we're stuck with Ichiro.

But those of us who keep watching Beltre's at-bats on a regular basis have noticed he tends to look much tighter with RISP. He seems to swing at more balls out of the zone. Even when he makes contact, the pitches don't seem as hittable and result in outs more often than not.

That's the kind of factual, stat-based analysis I come to this blog for.

Now, admittedly, the sample sizes are small. But I'm not going to dismiss the discussion based merely on that.

Sure, why let commonly held statistical thinking influence your reading of stats? That's just silly.

You fit in well with this organization, Geoff. You deserve each other.

Long may you run.

I’m a Beltre fan and agree with the folks who want to keep him, however the bad luck argument makes me uncomfortable. I know I’ll be skewered by some on here for using the line “if you ever coached or played baseball you know . . .” without citing any statistics, but I’m going to anyway.
If you have played or coached baseball beyond a certain level you know, because you’ve either seen it time and time again with your own eyes or gone through it as a player, that good hitters can go through a series or a week or two where their hard hit balls don’t drop in. You also know that if a hitter’s batted balls continue to find fielders’ gloves over the course of a season, they are either not a very good hitter or else they are having a poor year at the plate. It is not bad luck. Good hitters find ways to get on base, drive in runs, etc., when they get the chance. By the way, what constitutes a line drive and who decides? Often times what looks to be a line drive is a “liner” that was mis-hit because the batter was fooled. Does that add to the line drive stat and in turn a hitter’s bad luck? In my opinion, the “bad luck” argument is one we shouldn’t use to explain away Beltre’s poor performance at the plate this year.

"Simply put, the guys doing the hitting with RISP have not been the ones getting the most opportunities to do it. "

But yet our team OPS with RISP is still higher than our overall OPS. If our underperforming hitters were getting more at bats with RISP this would not be possible.

You're making something out of nothing, here, I think. Some hitters have struggled with RISP, some haven't. It's pretty much evened out like any objective observer would expect.

As for Beltre, I agree that he was hurt by bad luck earlier in the year, and he seems to be pressing now.

Who Knows what numbers would change for some of these guy`s if this team acually had a personality.This team is just flat and boring.Have another fun tear Geoff.

What about Beltre's busted thumb? That has to be at least a distraction, if not outright keeping him from making certain kinds of swings.

(I honestly don't know what it would do - affect the grip to make hits less solid, make him flinch as he hits, compel him to change his swing to compensate, or what. Perhaps someone else with actual experience can speculate here. :) )

If the busted thumb is contributing and Beltre was just bloody-minded enough not to go on the DL for it... well... sigh.

The Bagheads are behind Adrian Beltre and know that his BABIP numbers tell the true story. He has been a beacon of light in a dark hole of a season.

Baghead Day cometh...

BTW, I had a post deleted because it contained attendance figures!?! Readers I encourage you to look at attendance figures on the season. You'll see the truth.

Geoff, overall I agree with your post. I find it interesting that just a suggestion of giving Beltre a rest (can't see how you can argue with his cliff type drop off) has hijacked the blog the last 2-3 days. May be if he's hurt this would help him. Hitters go thru hot and cold streaks and a good manager should adjust accordingly. I for one, did not suggest trading Beltre, but when he's swinging at pitches over his head, it's time to sit him down a few games. I buy the argument that no one in this line up can protect him. Bonds had the same issue a couple of years a go and he gladly took his 100+ walks instead of swinging at anything and everything. But, if we attempt to be objective for a minute, Beltre's problem is more than that. If you recall he did not respond well to batting 4 or 5 spot last year and had to be moved around to find an ideal spot. This correlates with his lower performance with RISP. While he's a very good 3rd base man and has an awesome glove, I just don't think he's Mr. October material. You can argue all you want, but there's a reason Reggie Jackson and Jeter are considered clutch and ARod and to some degree Bonds are not. It goes beyond hitting skills. Do you cherish to get the ball with 2 second left and down by 2 points, like MJ always did? Some do. Some don't and pass the ball.

Unfortunately, he's not the only one on this team with this problem (how many HR's Sexson has hit when the games don't matter?) The opposite, as undisciplined as he is, Betancourt is more clutch. I'm sure the statisticians on the blog will try to explain that one. Ichiro is the puzzling one for me. Considering how he's done over the last few years (batting .400+ with RISP). This year he's stunk it up. My guess, the way the team's playing he's lost his mojo and doesn't care as much.

This thing about "clutch" hitters keeps coming up. Let me offer my interpretation of what people mean when they say that "clutchness" is a myth (a view I agree with).

The whole concept of "clutchness" as typically tossed around suggests that some athletes have some hidden reservoir of performance they can tap into at will in important situations - an extra gear if you like. This means truly great players can never be "clutch" because they play at their absolute maximum ability every single play. That's why they are great. If a guy has an extra gear, that means he's playing below his potential most of the time. I'd rather have guys who are always on, not guys who hold something back for big situations.

Reggie Jackson, Michael Jordon, Bret Favre. Pick your sport and example. These are all just great players who were consistently great, no matter what the situation. It is just that the big moments in big games made more of an impression on us than the routine plays did, so we call them clutch performers. They were really just star performers, all the time.

Now there is such a thing as a player who chokes under the pressure of a big moment and plays below his usual standards, but that isn't really the same thing. If a guy changes the level of his game in big situations, it is almost always a decrease in performance, not an increase. To the extent that clutchness exists, it is simply the ability to be immune to pressure and always play your best, not the ability to "step it up a notch". That's the mythical part.

Some baseball stats, like RISP hitting are deceptive. I would suggest that ALL players should hit as good or better with RISP than they do generally. With runners on base, the pressure is on the pitcher to throw strikes and not make mistakes. Good hitters who are not adversely affected by pressure will get more hittable pitches with runners on...and hit them. That should be expected.

I'm a big fan of Beltre. I think he is Bavasi's one big success FA signing. I do think he is overswinging with RISP. Maybe that makes him "not clutch", but it should be fixable. All he has to do is hit like he usually does. That's what happens on losing teams. Opportunities to succeed start seeming like opportunities to fail, and panic leads to guys changing their game - usually for the worse.

11:12 AM, Jun 12, 2008

9:55 PM, Jun 11, 2008
Let us hope that Capo begins listening to the more moderate voices in his head.

I wanted to post one last time to kind of touch on this.....
The problem i have with a few of you is there is no moderation with anything you debate....its all one way or the other....which to me means people aren't using common sense or that they just choose to ignore it if it benefits them to do so.

The question was raised as to knowledge, and I explained my reasoning that I think you really need to have played the game at a competitive level to really understand it....I was asked what a competitive level was, and explained that I think HS is about where baseball starts becoming more a competitive game than a fun or learning game. I included some sarcasm directly specifically at a person who went to great lengths to be a sarcastic and confrontation jerk.....and a few of you twisted that whole argument into something it really wasn't.......then instead of bringing the conversation back on course, you felt it necessary to completely derail the conversation. i apologized to geoff for my part in this, but I think it speaks volumes about some of you that you felt it necessary to post under different names, and post completely off topic and inflammatory remarks.

As to the Beltre argument, again, some of you chose to ignore any part of the conversation that you didn't feel you could attack sarcastically, or which supported your argument. I never said Beltre sucked, or was terrible....I called him an average hitter, and the best defensive 3B I've seen.

My disagreeing with the "Luck" argument started all this crap......sorry, i don't buy into "luck".....If you've watched more than a few M's games this year, Beltre looks exactly the same as he has since signing with the M's......Guys are talking about the line drive numbers......but what classifies a line drive? does that mean he's mashed every one of those, or does it just mean they aren't lazy fly balls? You say he's making more contact on pitches outside the strike zone. Is that a good thing? Does that mean he has poor plate discipline? Is he turning more of that contact into poorly hit balls that are turned into outs?
To me, its not "luck", its results........he might be getting the bat on more pitches than he was, but that doesn't mean he's unlucky, and I'm sure if you go back and watch every game this season, you'll find "hits" that were graciously scored scored so by forgiving scorekeepers, bleeders that got through drawn in IF, and popups that simply fell in.....
To me, luck is a ground ball taking a wicked hop, or a gust of wind blowing a ball away from a fielder.......Adrian Beltre hitting .235 isn't luck, its results.
I made some sarcastic comments yesterday, and for that I apologize.....but I hardly think I was alone, or the worst offender...

"Thanks for trying to wake up those that have been blinded by years of playing "fantasy baseball", which has nothing to do with baseball. The game is still played by humans."

Thanks for still being an arrogant ass.

I hate fantasy baseball.

Donovan, very very good points on what being clutch really means. I completely agree.

There can be players who are always great, and there can be players who fold under the pressure of big moments. But at this level of play, professional baseball players should never fold under pressure of high leverage situations.

So is Beltre un-clutch because he strikes out twice as much with RISP? I don't think so, because his career stats mirror those with RISP - so I think this year is a fluke, and can be fixed. He's gone from being unlucky to just simply struggling right now. But I still love him and do believe he will break out of his slump and go back to how he was hitting in May (not .avg wise as much as his approach and results).