Adam Frazier 2023

[btdart20]

3 hours ago, Yossarian said:

The question is: Did he need to overpay for these guys?  I don't remember there being a big market for Frazier, Gibson, or Lyles.  They have certainly filled a role in this team and their impact has been positive, but I didn't see a reason to pay above market value for them. 

Would they have signed for less in Baltimore or did we "need" to go over-market to sign them?  I don't know the answer to those questions.  I've speculated that this season has changed the temperature of the FA room regarding the O's "Confederate Money".  

Were they signing anyone else with the $X savings?  I tend to doubt that.  It would have just stuff the Angelos family pockets.

For those three outliers of FA team spending, the money = Elias' desire/motivation to have those Chosen Guys on the team.  He didn't want to lose them for whatever reason.  Pick nits here and there, but they are Elias' guys and his reputation (at least in my eyes) was going to rise/fall on how they/the team did.  That was my observation as we saw the value-add of IP that Lyles contributed last season.  This year we see a similar story with Gibson and some additional nuances with Frazier.

Maybe the WAR isn't what I'd hope for (maybe it is, haven't looked) on a $/WAR basis, but from a holistic club perspective it's hard for me to say any of them were bad signings for what they have offered the team.

[Just Regular]

His heroics yesterday make the day to day decisions on Houston lineups against righties interesting.    Most of the past month my general impression has been Westburg trending toward everyday status.

Frazier also got a knock off this year's iteration of Nick Anderson for the Rays, Robert Stephenson.    It was only the 3rd hit period he's allowed this month.

[LA2]

1 hour ago, NedFromYork said:

Can't wait for the 7th game of the World Series Adam Frazier walkoff homer, gonna be epic!

Bill Mazeroski was the Pirates 2nd-baseman when he hit the walk-off homer that won the 1960 WS vs. the Bronx Bombers, as was Frazier during his 2021 All-Star season (not so long ago!).

[e16bball]

3 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

True, but most of that is driven by bad 7th and 8th innings numbers. He's also been a terrible pinch hitter.

BUT:

RISP: 300/.385/.560/.945 in 120 PAs
High Leverage: .301/.366/.507/.873 in 86 PAs
9th inning: .324/.366/.514/.879 in 41 PAs

That's clutch.    

 

For what it’s worth, Fangraphs has a metric called “Clutch.” They describe it as: “…how much better or worse a player does in high leverage situations than he would have done in a context neutral environment.” It compares a player against himself, so a player who hits .300 in high leverage situations when he’s an overall .300 hitter is not considered clutch.

Since Frazier made his ML debut in 2016, there’s been 2290 different players with at least one ML plate appearance. 

Among all those players, Adam Frazier ranks 1st in Clutch. By a mile. He’s at 5.94, and the silver goes to Tommy Edman at 5.16. Only 3 other players (Bryce Harper among them) are over 4.00, and there are only 15 other guys who check in over 3.00.

There are very few humans that I think truly get better at what they’re doing when the pressure is on and the intensity is cranked up. Just being able to maintain your usual level under those circumstances is an accomplishment, even for pro athletes. But we have a lot of years of data that suggests that Adam Frazier might be one of the extremely rare people whose performance actually improves under pressure.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, e16bball said:

For what it’s worth, Fangraphs has a metric called “Clutch.” They describe it as: “…how much better or worse a player does in high leverage situations than he would have done in a context neutral environment.” It compares a player against himself, so a player who hits .300 in high leverage situations when he’s an overall .300 hitter is not considered clutch.

Since Frazier made his ML debut in 2016, there’s been 2290 different players with at least one ML plate appearance. 

Among all those players, Adam Frazier ranks 1st in Clutch. By a mile. He’s at 5.94, and the silver goes to Tommy Edman at 5.16. Only 3 other players (Bryce Harper among them) are over 4.00, and there are only 15 other guys who check in over 3.00.

There are very few humans that I think truly get better at what they’re doing when the pressure is on and the intensity is cranked up. Just being able to maintain your usual level under those circumstances is an accomplishment, even for pro athletes. But we have a lot of years of data that suggests that Adam Frazier might be one of the extremely rare people whose performance actually improves under pressure.

So why can't he perform at that level all the time?

I'll take someone that is less clutch but puts up better numbers consistently.

That at bat in the third and the sixth might end up making more of a difference than that one in the 9th.

[Aristotelian]

1 hour ago, btdart20 said:

Would they have signed for less in Baltimore or did we "need" to go over-market to sign them?  I don't know the answer to those questions.  I've speculated that this season has changed the temperature of the FA room regarding the O's "Confederate Money".  

Were they signing anyone else with the $X savings?  I tend to doubt that.  It would have just stuff the Angelos family pockets.

 

In addition to this I'm not sure where this narrative of "overpaying" is coming from. Frazier has a much better career track record than Jurickson Profar and they got essentially the same contract. He got less than Joey Gallo.

I don't know of a great comp for Gibson but if he got overpaid it's not by much, IMO. Jordan Lyles got 2/$17M and Gibson is way better than him. Kluber got the same deal and Gibson looks like a bargain from that standpoint.

[Tony-OH]

19 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

So why can't he perform at that level all the time?

I'll take someone that is less clutch but puts up better numbers consistently.

That at bat in the third and the sixth might end up making more of a difference than that one in the 9th.

I don't think any of us are saying that Adam Frazier should be an everyday player or even be considered to come back in any role next year. All I'm saying is he's been pretty darn clutch this year. Pure and simple, the numbers prove it out. whether that's a repeatable skill year in and year out is debatable. 

 

[forphase1]

43 minutes ago, e16bball said:

For what it’s worth, Fangraphs has a metric called “Clutch.” They describe it as: “…how much better or worse a player does in high leverage situations than he would have done in a context neutral environment.” It compares a player against himself, so a player who hits .300 in high leverage situations when he’s an overall .300 hitter is not considered clutch.

Since Frazier made his ML debut in 2016, there’s been 2290 different players with at least one ML plate appearance. 

Among all those players, Adam Frazier ranks 1st in Clutch. By a mile. He’s at 5.94, and the silver goes to Tommy Edman at 5.16. Only 3 other players (Bryce Harper among them) are over 4.00, and there are only 15 other guys who check in over 3.00.

There are very few humans that I think truly get better at what they’re doing when the pressure is on and the intensity is cranked up. Just being able to maintain your usual level under those circumstances is an accomplishment, even for pro athletes. But we have a lot of years of data that suggests that Adam Frazier might be one of the extremely rare people whose performance actually improves under pressure.

I don't believe in clutch.  But that's a ton of data over his career that is hard to just ignore.  Normally I think clutch is just due to SSS and I really don't buy that someone can suddenly hit better with runners on or in the later part of the game or whatever.  But great post and some very interesting stats there.  

[DirtyBird]

1 minute ago, forphase1 said:

I don't believe in clutch.  But that's a ton of data over his career that is hard to just ignore.  Normally I think clutch is just due to SSS and I really don't buy that someone can suddenly hit better with runners on or in the later part of the game or whatever.  But great post and some very interesting stats there.  

Do you believe in "choking"? 

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, DirtyBird said:

Do you believe in "choking"? 

I don't think most players that get to this level have an issue dealing with high stress situations.

[forphase1]

1 minute ago, DirtyBird said:

Do you believe in "choking"? 

In general, yes.  I do believe that some folks crack under pressure and are unable to perform their best when the heat is on.  That pressure can certainly make you a worse player as you press, get out of sync, whatever you want to call it.  Now do I believe that some players are able to shrug off the pressure of the moment and still perform at their usual high level even under pressure?  Absolutely.  But what I don't really buy is that some players can suddenly give '110%' when the pressure is on and perform beyond their normal abilities just because they are in a 'clutch' situation.  If a player has the ability to be a .300 hitter with runners on, then why can't they do it with the bases empty?  Either they have the talent/ability or they don't.  Now MAYBE you have a small subset of players who are slackers and lazy, and simply don't give it their best shot unless it's in an important place, and MAYBE they can be better when it 'counts', but only because they aren't giving the full 100% unless it's whatever they consider a 'meaningful' at bat.  But that kind of a bum I don't want around...you get 3-5 at bats an entire game...you should be giving your absolute best performance each time, not just when runners are on or when it's late in the game.

So yes, I can understand and buy choking.  But clutch....no, I really don't buy into it.

[e16bball]

47 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

So why can't he perform at that level all the time?

I don’t know why he can’t. Maybe someone should look into it. Do interviews with him and a couple of the other guys (Edman, Daniel Descalso, Jorge Polanco, Bryce Harper, etc) who rank highly on that particular metric, as well as other people familiar with them and their mindset. 

There are a lot of possible reasons, I suppose. Maybe it’s a baseball reason, like they’re all particularly good fastball hitters or great mistake hitters, and they tend to get more of *those* when the opposing pitchers are under stress. Maybe it’s a personal reason, like they’re all highly ADHD and struggle to stay focused over the course of long games (or long seasons), but can “hyper-focus” in certain situations. Maybe it’s all just statistical noise and the only thing they all have in common is that they all wound up on the friendly end of this particular bell curve over the course of 7-8 seasons. 

Looking at the longer-term leaders in the metric, it appears to favor the guys with elite contact skills. Tony Gwynn, Pete Rose, and Ichiro all rank in the top 5 all-time. Perhaps that’s a starting point for further analysis. There seems to be a lot of “heady/gamer” ballplayers there as well, with guys like Omar Vizquel, Ozzie Guillen, and Yadier Molina also cracking the top 10, so perhaps baseball IQ plays a major role. Former O’s Mark McLemore and Eddie Murray also show up on the first page of the leaderboard, so perhaps our collective familiarity with them could give more insight.

I don’t have any ready explanation for it. All I can say with certainty is that in the “Clutch” metric, he appears to be a massive outlier over the course of 3500 career PAs. The overwhelming majority of players — as we’d expect — are basically the same guy regardless of the pressure. Over 71% of all those players have a clutch score between 0.49 and -0.49, which suggests very little difference based on “clutchness.”

And even fewer exist at the extremes. Breaking down the percentage of players in that 2270 man population to achieve a Clutch rating above certain milestones:

Over 0.50: 11.6% of players

Over 1.00: 6.2% of players

Over 2.00: 2.5% of players

Over 3.00: 0.8% of players

Over 4.00: 0.2% of players

Over 5.00: 0.09% of players

[Frobby]

I thought Frazier made a pretty nifty play in the 9th inning last night with a runner on 3B and one out.  Playing in, he jumped to snare a hard hit one-hopper and the runner was unable to advance with the tying run.  It’s the kind of play where you often see a ball tick off an infielder’s glove because they have so little time to react when playing in.  Good job by Frazier there.   

[LA2]

16 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

I don't think any of us are saying that Adam Frazier should be an everyday player or even be considered to come back in any role next year. All I'm saying is he's been pretty darn clutch this year. Pure and simple, the numbers prove it out. whether that's a repeatable skill year in and year out is debatable. 

 

Are you skeptical about the "Clutch" stats that e16bball cited?