The Cubs Have Done a Poor Job of Clutch-Hitting
In his recap of Friday’s loss to the White Sox, the Tribune’s Paul Sullivan writes in his opening sentence: “The Cubs haven’t been a clutch-hitting team all year . . . .”
I immediately thought, is that true?, for Sullivan offers no evidence in support of his assertion.
In fact, it is.
As a team this year, the Cubs have hit .260/.329/.411 overall, for a 740 OPS. In “close and late” situations, all those numbers drop: .225/.306/.355, for a 661 OPS (which is, incidentally, almost exactly what Cub opponents are hitting in such situations this year). The Cubs are 10th in the NL in team OPS overall. But they are 15th out of 16 teams in OPS in clutch situations, and just barely in front of Pittsburgh for last in the league.
It might be easy to chalk up the discrepancy to the horrid pinch hitting (which often occurs in close and late situations, one would assume) offered up by Lenny Harris, Troy O’Leary, and Tom Goodwin this year. But that only tells part of the story. Of the regulars, only Alex Gonzalez has done significantly better in clutch situations (707 OPS overall versus an 882 OPS in the clutch, thanks to his extra inning home-run heroics) and only Eric Karros has been about the same (833 OPS overall v. 864 OPS in clutch). Every other regular has been worse. Hee Seop Choi has the biggest drop-off, going from 886 overall to 197.
No Cub player has near enough at-bats in clutch situations for their numbers in those situations to mean much in assessing them individually (and I will definitely take issue with anyone who would try to draw a conclusion regarding Choi’s “clutch hitting ability” based on 24 plate appearances). But what these numbers do tell us is that as a team, the Cubs have had an OPS drop-off in clutch situations bigger than what we would expect despite the good relief pitching faced in those situations. As a result, we can expect to see those numbers in the future to fall more in line (or rather climb more in line) with their overall hitting, hopefully providing the team with more late-inning runs.