Cisco is clutch

For all its abstractness, whatever clutch might be defined as, Francisco Cervelli seems to embody the term. Though Cervelli has only started 15 games, he already has 14 RBI on the season, and, more impressively, almost half of those runs were produced in high-leverage situations. The numbers tell the story, as Cervelli has hit a commendable .833/.857/.833 in high-leverage contexts, plating 6 of his fellow Bomber brethren. Compare that to his offensive production in both medium-leverage situations – .467/.579/.600, 1 RBI – and low-leverage situations – .286/.324/.400, 7 RBI – and one could certainly say that, thus far, Cervelli has gone above and beyond the call of duty when faced with a game-changing at-bat (he seems to relish it). FanGraphs’ clutch score agrees, too, citing Cervelli’s as 0.51, the third highest such score on the 2010 Yankees. Obviously the sample size on this issue is small, but it seems worthy of mention.

Anyway, going forward, all we can do is hope that Cervelli continues to hit at a respectable clip – thus far, his production has been more than “respectable,” but I am assuming his numbers come down a bit over time – and that he continues to hit in those especially significant moments.

Photo by the AP