Over the past decade, and really dating back to the early days of The Bill James Baseball Abstracts, baseball analysts have done an excellent job of systemically eliminating traditional narratives from baseball discourse. People are beginning to understand that things like pitcher wins, batting average, and errors are poor ways to judge player performance.   The mystique of the “proven closer” and the sacrifice bunt is slowly fading. Nowadays, fans are more skeptical of the traditional, and statistically unproven, baseball tropes that have been propagated as baseball’s holy doctrine for over a century.

Since we’re in the midst of an incredibly exciting baseball playoff, the current baseball trope that’s being attacked is the idea of “clutch”. Many of the arguments are well outlined in this piece from SI’s Albert Chen, but the main takeaway is this: There is no statistical evidence of players performing better in clutch situations. The guys that fans consider clutch, the Derek Jeters and David Ortizs, don’t have the statistical profile late in games and in the playoffs that would indicate that they raise their performance in clutch situations. If there were such a thing as clutch performers, their “clutchiness” would show up in the data. Thusly, since there’s no evidence of clutch performers in the data, there can’t be such a thing as clutch performers.

But I don’t think that’s the case.

For starters, the biggest issue in the debate about clutch performers is how do we actually define “clutch”? Many of the arguments out there use something along the lines of “late and close” statistics (Baseball Reference defines late and close situations as plate appearances in the seventh inning or later with the batting team tied, ahead by one, or the tying run at least on deck.) or playoff statistics.

But when it comes to defining clutch, a statistical approach is the wrong way to go about it. For one thing, baseball is a game of sample size. Even the most prolific postseason hitters only accrue around 300 postseason plate appearances in a career, which is not nearly enough to come to any concrete conclusions about a player. Throw in the fact that a disproportionate amount of these playoff and “late and close” at-bats come against either the opponent’s best starters or top relievers, and it is clear that there’s no use in trying to parse through the numbers to identify the clutch performers.

Side note: Good luck finding an argument regarding clutch performers that actually mentions the pitchers. Pitchers are equally likely to come up big in a clutch spot as hitters. In fact, a hitter can do everything right in a clutch at-bat and still not get a hit because the pitcher made the pitches he needed to. Just another reason not to trust the statistics when it comes to evaluating clutch performers.

So how do we define and identify clutch performers? A lot of the anti-clutch arguments, such as this one from the esteemed Keith Law (Insider only) will claim that it doesn’t make sense to think that players can magically improve their performance in clutch situations. This is undoubtedly true, but it also mis-frames the debate.

A few weeks back, I took a shot at explaining why Michael Brantley was having more success with runners on base than with the bases empty. What I noticed after watching a multitude of Michael Brantley at-bats is that he was the exact same hitter with the exact same approach regardless of the situation. I think this is the key to defining what exactly it is to be “clutch”. Clutch performers shouldn’t be defined as “raising the level of performance”, but instead should be defined as a player consistently performing in clutch situations as he would in any situation.

If clutch performers are defined like this, it makes a lot more sense to consider exactly what qualities a clutch performer may have. The thing that makes a guy like David Ortiz, or even a guy like Michael Brantley, more likely to succeed in a clutch situation is that they have the same approach in the ninth inning as they do in the first.

Ultimately, if we’re going to say there’s no such thing as clutch performers, then we have to say that there’s no real difference between an at-bat in April versus an at-bat in October. I don’t think that’s true. There are a ton of emotions and pressures and challenges that are present in postseason at-bats that simply aren’t there in April. I believe that managing and channeling those emotions and pressures and challenges is a skill, and some players are better at that skill than others. When viewed in this light, it would seem that there is a place for the clutch performer in baseball after all. 

Jeremy Klein is an unabashed Cleveland Sports fan who clearly had way to much fun at Syracuse this past weekend. You can follow him on Twitter @PapaBearJere.

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Traditionally, teams not in the MLB Playoffs shy away from making big headline news-type announcements during the MLB Playoffs. Out of respect for the game and the teams still playing, let the games being played on the field garner the headlines.

Of course that doesn't stop us from making small talk about our Tribe team, because behind the scenes, they are talking, and after their exit a little over a week ago, they have done a little bit of shaking up.

And trust me, there are plenty of storylines that are worth laying out before the offseason officially begins, because as we've learned in the past few years, this team is pretty quick to strike. Whether it is trading for Derek Lowe or trading for Yan Gomes and Mike Aviles, if this team identifies something they want to do, they do it quickly.

But here's where the momentum that leads you to believe I was going to jump into offseason chatter crashes right into a brick wall. Because I'm just not feeling it.

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Chief Wahoo has been the face of Cleveland baseball for more than 60 years. Originally designed in 1947 by 17-year-old draftsman Walter Goldbach, Wahoo was the brainchild of former Tribe owner Bill Veeck, one of the greatest marketers baseball has ever seen.

Veeck wanted a unique image for his team, something apart from the statuesque Indian heads in profile that had served as the team’s logos up to that point. Goldbach devised a grinning cartoon Indian with a large nose and yellow skin. That version of Wahoo was perched on the left sleeve of the Tribe’s uniforms when they won their last World Series in 1948.

In 1951, the logo was redesigned to its current form. Wahoo’s red face, white teeth and eyes, and blue hair correspond to the team colors. Since then, Wahoo has been somewhere on the Tribe’s uniforms at all times. He was perched on the cap, encased in a wishbone-C for much of the 1950s. He moved down to the left breast on the Tribe’s sleeveless uniforms of the 1960s. He was given a body in a 1970s logo revision that featured a leg-kicking Wahoo about to swing a bat.

In the early 80s, the head-only logo returned to the left sleeve, where it has stayed ever since. For the 1986 season, the logo returned to the cap, unadorned. Along with the Orioles and Blue Jays, the Indians were one of the few teams to place their logo on the team caps instead of a city-initial monogram.

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Frankly, it's probably better when they just leave our name out of it.  We used to blame it on ESPN, but it's probably fair, at this point, to just paint the national media with one broad stroke.  Be it the "Worldwide Leader", NFL Network, Mad Dog Radio, or whatever other outlets engage in building their news stories around TMZ-type narratives, I find myself screaming "UNCLE!" so much more often than I used to.  Narratives, oh stupid narratives, why does the media seem to think we need you?

There really isn't much mystery to it, they do it because it sells, but also because it's easy, and even lazy to a certain extent.  The news is out there, whether we want to go and get it or simply let it come to us, but it's so much easier to find one popular topic and then to mercilessly beat one single dead horse until they are presented with another dead horse.  On a national level, they like to go after the cheaters and the ne'er-do-wells, and why not?  I admit that the Lance Armstrongs, Alex Rodriguezes, and Johnny Manziels of the world make for good press, but not every day.  That might be when it gets ugly.

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