Derek Jeter - Captain "Clutch"

If you go to baseball-reference.com, you will see "Captain Clutch" listed as one of Derek Jeter's nicknames. On that same page, you can see stats for his entire career, including postseason stats. So, with all this information at our fingertips, we can tell just how clutch Mr. Jeter is, can't we? 

Jeter's last playoff game was his 158th for his career, meaning he's played essentially an entire extra season of just postseason games. Clearly Captain Clutch's playoff numbers are significantly better than his regular season numbers right?

Well let's see! For this comparison, let's use his career stats broken down to a 162 game season average:

Playoffs: 158 games
162 avg: 162 games (obvi)

Playoffs: 734 plate appearances
162 avg: 745 plate appearances 

(Pretty good base-line for comparison....)

Playoffs: 200 hits
162 avg: 207 hits

Playoffs: 32 doubles
162 avg: 33 doubles


Playoffs: 5 triples
162 avg: 4 triples


Playoffs: 18 stolen bases
162 avg: 22 stolen bases

(Sensing a trend...)


Playoffs: .308 batting average 
162 avg: .313 batting average


Playoffs: 66 walks
162 avg: 65 walks


Playoffs: .374 on base percentage
162 avg: .382 on base percentage


Playoffs: 302 total bases
162 avg: 296 total bases


Playoffs: .465 slugging percentage
162 avg: .448 slugging percentage

(Eerily similar...)


Playoffs: 20 home runs
162 avg: 16 home runs

(A-ha! clearly he drives in more runs in the playoffs!)


Playoffs: 61 RBIs
162 avg: 79 RBIs 

Well.

There's a couple things we can take away from this. 1: Maybe Derek Jeter isn't as clutch as we all think he is? 2: Or, maybe there's no such thing as clutch? After all, if the most clutch baseball player of our generation performs EXACTLY the same in the playoffs as he does in the regular season...

No no. That can't be true. He's obviously clutch and steps up under the bright lights of the postseason. After all, he is Mr. November.