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1. Babe Ruth 2. Ted Williams 3. Barry Bonds 4. Honus Wagner 5. Willie Mays 6. Hank Aaron 7. Josh Gibson 8. Cy Young 9. Lou Gehrig 10. Joe DiMaggio 11. Rickey Henderson 12. Roger "The Rocket" Clemens 13. Alex Rodriguez 14. Sandy Koufax 15. Jimmie Foxx 16. Pedro Martinez 17. Ty Cobb 18. Mel Ott 19. Rogers Hornsby 20. Albert Pujols 21. Stan Musial 22. Nolan Ryan 23. Mickey Mantle 24. Walter Johnson 25. Sammy Sosa 26. Satchel Paige 27. Greg Maddux 28. Cap Anson 29. Manny Ramirez 30. Bob Feller 31. Christy Matthewson 32. Mike Schmidt

I disagree that you can be an MLB regular and not play to your potential almost all of the time. Like I said earlier, you'd have to be extremely talented to get away with that. There's no reason to not bring your maximum whatever in an at-bat. It's a sprint, not a marathon. There's really no need to coast in an at-bat. Putting that aside though, what you are describing isn't really clutch. Clutch requires that you play over your head only at certain times. That there's a level of ability that you can only tap into when the at-bat is at its utmost importance (and the assumption that this is during critical times for your team, I've argued self-interest likely trumps that for a lot of a player's career, but whatever). What you are describing is a player that doesn't take at-bats to his potential the majority of the time. Even if that were the case for the majority of players, that's not clutch. There have to be players that do have that kind of focus to take 500 at-bats a year. It is the highest level of competition, after all. So what you're saying is that there are players that focus better and more often than others. I'd argue that weed-out takes care of most of that, but you're essentially arguing for an anti-clutch mechanism, not a new magical level of performance.

I do, and I'm not making the case that they are the same player or have the same trade value. It's also not irrelevant as it illustrates how people undervalue defense. I'm not saying it does much more than that though. Just that teams aren't going to trade anything for Rolen unless they think he has a decent shot to be healthy, and if they think he has a decent shot to be healthy, that means value along the lines of Cabrera at 3B just because of his historically superior glove. Last year he was about four wins above replacement (Blalock was 1.5-2 in his last two full seasons). Even if he's a 90 OPS+ hitter now, he still has value. Of course, he could fall off a cliff, so that tempers things as far as a trade return. Basically, I don't think he should be traded unless there's more of a long term return, but you've read all this already.

He's a league average hitter with a poor glove. No team is going to pick up Rolen's salary unless they are fairly confident that he's healthy. Here's something fun. Last year Miguel Cabrera and not healthy Scott Rolen were 52 runs apart in UZR (+24, -28), and 51.3 runs apart in Baseball Reference's linear weights. If the Cards deal Rolen, they should get a better return that will help past 2009. 2008 is lost cause anyway.

I think it was bound to happen when someone like Jose Guillen is getting 36 million dollars.

Situational hitting is mainly bat control. It's a skill that has to do with not striking out basically and it's not all that important. There's really nothing clutch about it in the sense of a new stress-induced level of performance. Any player that makes an out in a big situation has choked, just like if he got a hit it would've been clutch. The question is whether he was performing at a different talent level because of the situation and if it's repeatable. I find the that hard to believe.

Maybe you could think about it like this: all major leaguers are clutch. To stay in the bigs, it takes an insane amount of talent, and an insane amount of concentration. Hitting major league pitching is just really hard. Everyone knows that. If you can concentrate any more, you will use that. And if you want to talk about stressful, I expect a rookie season in the bigs would be at the top of the list. Not the playoffs when you are 31 and an established player. However, part of the reason that some people wash out, might be mental. They are prone to lapses in concentration, or their game lowers under stress. If you care about the game and making a career out of it. If you have that self-interest to set yourself and your family up financially, then all of the at-bats are going to be big until that happens. I'd usually assume this kind of thing is a matter of talent, but whatever, sometimes there's a grey area on what's what exactly. This is just another one of those things were the level of play is so elite that you are going to have weird findings. Like DiPS or catcher ERA. Stuff that people don't want to believe, but it's true because you have to have so much of whatever that "stuff" is or you never get your cup of coffee.

Because it's different for different hitters and different types of hitters. There's a skill aspect to it (much moreso than for pitchers), but I'm not sure it's easily nailed down in the short term, since it's sans BB, SO and HR, leaving you with even smaller samples than one might think. Plus, if the objective is to hit the ball hard, then for a lot of guys that means the ball is going to go over the fence. I'd rather not ignore that for hitters coupled with the fact that pure BABIP is a skill already. Maybe Meph or someone wants to weigh in here. I've just always been skeptical of the utility. But, like I said, his BB% is steadily increasing. His HR/FB is also down. And of course hitting more grounders will increase his BABIP. More for him even than your average player. I'd just expect him in the range of .775 OPS with value on the basepaths. That's not a bad player.

I'm having trouble parsing that one. I guess he's saying that great RH hitters can hit most of the pitchers they face. The Cardinals just DFA'd John Rodriguez. He's a pretty good approximation of a left-handed Matt Murton. Hendry should be all over that, I suppose.

I think 2006 was just as much an aberration as last year. Probably more like 2004-2005. I'd set a 50th at around a .300 average with a .350 BABIP or so, with .270 and .330 being high and low ends. I think BABIP for hitters is kind of silly but it probably works OK for him since he's a low slugging burner. If his BB% continues to rise and he hits ten taters instead of three, I could see him having a pretty valuable year if he can hack it at a premium position like SS. I don't know much about his defense though. Hmm. He's played less games at SS than I thought, and was a 2B in the minors. UZR says he's been a butcher at SS, but it's a worthless sample. I'm guessing it wouldn't be pretty.

That would be me. Maybe others too, I don't know. Maybe this is pointless since you said "period," but I'll give it a shot. I said anti-clutch was easier to swallow than clutch, because hitting isn't a marathon. It's a maximum effort and concentration proposition every time. I think it's more likely that a player could be affected negatively by the biggest situation he's ever been in, than that igniting some skill that they can't tap into otherwise. Also, what's a nerve-wracking or "clutch" situation to a player might not be exactly be high leverage situations, or late and close or whatever. As players move up through the levels, what makes an at-bat pressure packed? The fact that they are fighting for their career, promotions, a starting job with every plate appearance or that the Missoula Osprey is down by one run during some double-header in July? A player's entire pre-arb experience should be "clutch." If someone is saying that a major leaguer can only fully concentrate and give maximum effort during an at-bat that's late in the year, maybe has playoff implications, or in the postseason, then I say that's preposterous. If they are saying that they don't fully concentrate all of the time, then that's not what clutch is. That's just a player that must be supremely talented to hold down a job in the bigs with those kind of lapses. And the more we whittle it down to keep the romance alive, the more useless the sample sizes. For the most part, I think that players that are affected by these types of things are weeded out long before the show, so I doubt there is much of it. I don't doubt that there is such a thing as situational hitters, or hitters better suited for certain situations, so maybe some of the clutch debate is semantics. PH and abuck said it pretty well, I think.

Are you a Rays fan? OK, so something like this. 3B Longoria SS Bartlett (Brignac when? 2009?) 2B Iwamura 1B Pena OF/DH: Baldelli, Dukes, Upton, Gomes, Crawford Rincon (and Wheeler, right?) help out the atrocious bullpen. At some point you'll see a rotation of: Kazmir, Price, Garza, Shields, and Neimann? McGee? I don't know much about the last two guys. 2009 might be interesting.

His batting average was .263 and the league batting average for his career was .262. When you are a three true outcomes (walk, strikeout and homer) monster, you aren't going to hit for a really high average unless you get lucky on balls in play one year or something. Him getting all of two MVP votes in 1998 for his .299/.470/.752 year is hysterical.

That's a terrific denominator for someone who walked 1,300 times.

He was worth more than $12M two years ago. There's probably something to that (keeping the price high until Lowell et al are off the market), but also the Cards aren't exactly hurting for cash. If someone like the Twins is willing to pick up half the tab, it's probably worth it to the Cardinals to just cross their fingers on the one-in-whatever chance that he rebounds. If he hits .272/.342/.437 (avg 3B) and plays +20 defense that's going to be better than whatever the alternatives are at this point (and worth 12 million a year). The medical reports are supposedly good this offseason, but that could obviously be the same sort of posturing. I guess they could pick up half his contract and then pay millions of dollars for Pedro Feliz, who represents his downside. If I were a Cubs fan, I'd hope the Cardinals absorbed a large chunk of his contract and moved him, rather than hang on to him.

Thome was like 20 runs worse than Pena. Plus, I was joking. I know Meph has his metric and I'm sure it says Ordonez was most valuable for whatever reason. I just disagree that the award necessitates team scaling.

Carlos Pena got robbed. Seriously though, I don't think a player should be punished or rewarded because he happens to be on a better or worse team. And is it "value to a team" or "value to his team?"

If you've explained it lately, then I missed it, but I think I remember that. I'd rather just base it on a slwts style contribution, but I keep feeling like I'm more and more in the minority with that.

Easily? Wright was at least +5 on defense. And Ordonez was the AL MVP? Where are you getting your defensive numbers?

It's not clear to me that he was better than at least three other players.

The NL didn't have as clear a winner as the AL.

I heard he's taking 1,000 grounders a day this offseason, so presumably they are going to try and keep him at third. I guess they are just going to try and bludgeon the rest of the NL Central to death. The way their defense is shaping up, I have my doubts that it'll work, but I haven't really thought about it.

After the first. The Brewers are going to have one of the worst defenses in history. I can't wait until LaPorta is in left.

Most teams (all) know what those acronyms mean. Bill DeWitt talks about PITCHf/x and PBP data, and the analytical department that MGL spearheaded reports straight to Mozeliak now. The Cardinals are still paying Joel Pineiro almost $8 million next year.

Nice. 1 year, $850k. If anyone cares.