that's what I'm trying to figure out here. if 20 hypothetical players are worse, I would expect around 20 hypothetical players to be better and the other 160 hypothetical players to be pretty damn close to where they always are If 20 are worse, why even assume 20 are better? That makes absolutely no sense. If a certain subset of players is performing worse, it is a mathematical certainty that someone is performing better. And yes, collectively, the 180 players would be performing better. if you mean better than the 20 worst players, then I agree I mean that if the 20 "anti-clutch" players are collectively performing worse in high leverage situations than their otherwise expected performance, the other 180 players collectively are performing better in high leverage sitatuions than their otherwise expected performance. or 160 are performing and 20 others are performing higher. or 179 are performing the same and 1 is hitting 1.000 or whatever. baseball doesn't work this way