Jose Abreu, Clutch?
Jose Abreu signed with the Chicago White Sox during the 2013 off-season for six years and $68 millions dollars. He made an immediate impact. Abreu broke the rookie record for home runs in a month (9) and went on to hit 36 homers and drive in 107. Aside from his disappointing 1.9 WAR performance in 2016, Abreu has been a core piece for a White Sox team that has traded away most of its talent the past two seasons.
I got an opportunity to see Abreu in person when I attended a White Sox, Cubs spring training game at Camelback Ranch in Arizona this March. The White Sox began the game with a ground out from Moncada and a single to center from Garcia. Abreu took his place in the batters box. Immediately, the White Sox fan I was in attendance with mentioned Abreu’s proclivity for grounding into double plays.
Abreu grounded into a double play. It happens to hitters, even the good ones. Abreu bats with a lot of runners on so he is going to roll into a few double plays over the course of the season, but you’ll take it with the runs he drives in. Later in the fourth inning, Abreu takes his place in the box after a lead off double from Garcia. I turned to the White Sox fan and jokingly asserted that Abreu couldn’t ground into another double play.
All I could do is smile. This triggered a new comment from the Sox fan. Double plays and no clutch hitting are all you get from Jose Abreu. This comment inspired me to take a look at the least clutch Abreu game from the first quarter of this season. Let’s see just how un-clutch Abreu can be.
Fangraphs publishes a statistic “ clutch” which aims to quantify a player’s ability to deliver in tough situations. To avoid the math behind the statistic, I’m going to take a quote from David Appelman describing it.
Clutch is…
“…how much better or worse a player does in high leverage situations than he would have done in a context neutral environment.”
Clutch is calculated to create a range of scores that aim to separate players who consistently perform above or below their average play in tough situations from those who perform relatively neutrally based on situation.
Out of the 164 players qualified for the batting title so far this year, Jose Abreu is tied as the 38th most un-clutch player in baseball with James McCann. He currently has a clutch rating of -0.40. Bad, yes, but he ranks ahead of some good hitters including Mike Trout, Aaron Judge and Kris Bryant.
Abreu’s most un-clutch game of the season occurred on April 12th against the Minnesota Twins. The White Sox lost 4–0 as the Twins dominated behind Jose Berrios and his 11 strikeouts over 7 innings. Below we have the 5 events that Abreu took part in over the course of the game. The left of this table is relatively self-explanatory, but the right side might be new. The following statistics are explained in more detail on Fangraphs. Both WPA and LI are included in the calculations of how clutch a player has been.
- LI — Leverage Index
- RE — Run Expectancy
- WE — Win Expectancy
- WPA — Win Probability Added
- RE24 — The change in run expectancy given the 24 base-out combinations possible in the game of baseball.
Abreu made the final out of the first on a 1–2 sweeping slider that fooled him bad. The run expectancy in the inning was already only 0.12 runs when he took his spot in the batter’s box, but Berrios quickly disposed of Abreu bringing the inning to an end an the run expectancy to zero.
His next opportunity came in the 4th with a runner on first. On an 0–1 pitch Abreu got jammed and grounded into a double play. Only making matters worse, Abreu tripped over his bat and hobbled back to the dugout. This was the most important at-bat of the game for the White Sox. Abreu lowered the inning run expectancy from 0.95 runs to 0.12 runs. A miserable result and one that was certainly a turning point in the game.
In his next at-bat, Abreu led off the 7th. Berrios who was still pitching got ahead quickly and finished Abreu with another slider similar to the first inning. Leading off the inning, the White Sox had a run expectancy of slightly over a half a run as Abreu entered the batter’s box. After the whiff on the 1–2 slider, the run expectancy was cut by over half. Not the way to start a rally in a still winnable 2–0 game.
Abreu got his final at-bat of the night with two outs in the 9th. Down 4 runs with no one on-base, the importance of this at-bat was essentially zero as he hit a chopper to the third baseman Sano who couldn’t handle it. While he did reach base, the White Sox already only had a 0.1% chance of winning the game. Him reaching base added 0.3 percentage points to the White Sox chances. The bobble by Sano was essentially meaningless.
As his last action of the game, Abreu took second on defensive indifference. A play so insignificant they didn’t even show him at second on the telecast. Abreu failed to get anything going in the first and the seventh when the game was still within reach, striking out both time. Additionally, his double play killed the lead off base runner in the 4th when the game remained in reach at 2–0 Twins. Overall, Abreu had a rough day at the dish and certainly didn’t help his team in a winnable game. Abreu is a good hitter and that is partially why he suffers from the notion that he isn’t clutch. Performing in tight circumstances is hard, especially to the level he usually plays. Nonetheless, we’ll continue to monitor Abreu as he puts together another solid season for the Southsiders.
