Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Jack Cust: Clutch?

So The Examiner's Stephen Goff likes the Jack Cust signing, which is totally fine. For $600,000 of Maybe Money, it could pan-out.

But Goff says this:
The BA isn't great, but he hits for power, produces in the clutch and can get on base

Let's see if he's right - how "Clutchy" is Jack Cust?

For his career, Cust is a .242/.374/.439 hitter, for an .813 OPS, with 819K:444BB (1.84 K:BB ratio). With that in mind, some career splits:

Two outs, runners in scoring position: .198/.371/.391 (.762 OPS)
Late & close: .220/.358/.414 (.772 OPS)
Tie Game: .228/.373/.426 (.799 OPS)
Innings 7-9: .234/.360/.430 (.790 OPS)

That doesn't fully unpack what it means to be Clutch, so let's look at High-Leverage situations (according to Baseball-Reference): .229/.376/.386 (.762 OPS), 18 homers in 534 PAs.

OPS' in High-Leverage situations in the following years:
2011: .709
2010: .544
2009: .699
2008: .747
2007: 1.150

Alright. It's been four seasons since he had an OPS over .750 in high-leverage situations. It's been since 2008 that his SLG was higher than his OBP in high-leverage situations.

Looking strictly at his home run log, Cust has hit 105 homers. 33 of those have been in Innings 7-End. 18 of those homers have been in high-leverage situations. 35 have been go-ahead homers, 11 have been game-tying homers, and one has been a walk-off. So you're looking at 46 of his 105 homers either tied the game up, or sent his team ahead. Impressive, right? But you're still only talking about 105 homers in 2581 PAs, one every 24.6 plate appearances.

Whatever. You can define clutch however you want, but I'm not sure Cust is "clutch." Feel free to disagree, and tell me I'm wrong.