Study Reveals Baseball's Great Clutch Hitters

[MadCity]

http://www.livescience.com/othernews...h_hitters.html

[TheDave]

100 posts...thats all i ask...100 posts...

[Breck Bronc]

Well that was not a very in-depth article.

This debate will continue to rage on forever between statheads and seamheads. I think there are players who don't do well in pressure situations that "choke" more than others, but I also don't think hitters can elevate their ability at the plate under pressure. A good hitter is more likely to do well in pressure situations than an average or bad hitter will; a good hitter will still fail 60 to 70 percent of the time even in “clutch” situations.

I think the hitter vs. pitcher aspect of baseball makes it different to classify a player as clutch in comparison to sports like football, hockey, and basketball. I believe a good quarterback, goalie, power forward, etc. can more perceptibly raise their game than a hitter in baseball.

[MadCity]

My apologies if this isn't up to your standards dave. I just figured since there are so many baseball diehards on this board, they'd find this interesting. Especially since I remember an argument from a month or so ago arguing that there were no such things as clutch hitters. Alas, I shall slink back to my cave. Forgive the intrusion. We now return you to your regularly scheduled posting.

[-Slap-]

Originally Posted by MadCityBroncoFan

My apologies if this isn't up to your standards dave. I just figured since there are so many baseball diehards on this board, they'd find this interesting. Especially since I remember an argument from a month or so ago arguing that there were no such things as clutch hitters. Alas, I shall slink back to my cave. Forgive the intrusion. We now return you to your regularly scheduled posting.

I found it interesting. I believe there are clutch and not-so-clutch performers in every sport. I think Breck kind of nails it by saying its difficult to quantify in a hitter, simply because hitting a baseball is the single most difficult thing to do in sports.

I thought this article was interesting, too. They say that intelligent people are more prone to choke in pressure situations. This is not exactly a new theory in the world of sports. Bo Hickey could explain it better than I would.

Smart People Choke Under Pressure

By Bjorn Carey
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 09 February, 2005
7:00 a.m. ET

People perceived as the most likely to succeed might also be the most likely to crumble under pressure.

A new study finds that individuals with high working-memory capacity, which normally allows them to excel, crack under pressure and do worse on simple exams than when allowed to work with no constraints. Those with less capacity score low, too, but they tend not to be affected by pressure.

"The pressure causes verbal worries, like ‘Oh no, I can’t screw up,’" said Sian Beilock, assistant professor of psychology at Miami University of Ohio. "These thoughts reside in the working memory." And that takes up space that would otherwise be pondering the task at hand.

"When they begin to worry, then they’re in trouble," Beilock told LiveScience. "People with lower working-memory capacities are not using that capacity to begin with, so they’re not affected by pressure."

The findings are detailed this week’s issue of Psychological Science.

Working memory, also known as short-term memory, holds information that is relevant to performance and ensures task focus. It’s what allows us to remember and retrieve information from an early step of a long task, such as long-division math.

"In these math problems students have to perform subtraction and division, and if you’re trying to hold information in your memory and you start worrying about performance, then you can’t use your entire mental capacity to do the math," Beilock explained.

The study analyzed 93 undergraduate students from Michigan State University to determine their working-memory capacities. The students were divided into two groups, a high working-memory group (HWM) and a low working-memory group (LWM). Each person was given a 24-problem math test in a low-pressure environment. The HWM group did substantially better.

Then the two groups were given the same test, but were told that they were part of a "team effort" and an improved score would earn the team a cash reward. They were also told their performance was being evaluated by math professors.

Under this higher, real world pressure situation, the HWM group’s score dropped to that of the LWM group, which was not affected by the increased pressure.

Since working memory is known to predict many higher-level brain functions, the research calls into question the ability of high-pressure tests such as the SAT, GRE, LSAT, and MCAT to accurately gauge who will succeed in future academic endeavors.

[Merlin]

You would think that a Math and Economy major, writing about baseball (the quintessential statistical sport), would have all kinds of data for the reader to absorb and digest, but nothing Something tells me the analysis was not that superficial, just a very poor attempt at summarizing it