STRATOMATIC FRUSTRATIONS
I'm not going to bore everybody with my stratomatic team's problems, but I wanted to discuss the 'clutch hitting' rating in the game. Rob Neyer wrote this article a while back about how 'clutch' hitting doesn't exist, or at the very least cannot be proven (a very good read). Anyway, because I'm incredibly frustrated by my stratomatic team's performance (13-16, 1.5 out of first) I decided to do some research of my own regarding my team.

I wrote this in the form name then season average/clutch average and difference between the two in parenthesis. The information is from the past three seasons.

Name
Bobby Abreu .289/.275 (-14) .308/.289 (-17) .300/.330 (+30)
Lance Berkman .331/.300 (-31) .292/.301 (+9) .288/.264 (-22)
Corey Koskie .276/.255 (-19) .267/.250 (-17) .292/.261 (-31)
Carlos Gullen n/a .259/.259 (Even).276/.266 (-10)
Bernie Williams .307/.251 (-56) .333/.337 (+4) .263/.244 (-19)
Craig Wilson .310/.305 (-5) .264/.245 (-19) .262/.236 (-26)
Matt LeCroy .425/.443 (+18) .260/.264 (+4) .287/.333 (+46)
Wes Helms .222/.226 (+4) .243/.217 (-36) .261/.219 (-42)
Ramon Vazquez n/a .274/.248 (-32) .261/.205 (-56)
Carlos Baerga n/a .286/.237 (-49) .343/.377 (+34)

Comments...
So apparently Matt LeCroy is clutch as hell, while Bernie Williams figured out how to be clutch in 2002 but didn't know how to be in 2001 and 2003. Same with Lance Berkman. My favorite is Carlos Baerga, who was out of baseball for two seasons and was pretty weak in the 'clutch' in 2003 but all of a sudden figured out how to be clutch at the age of 87 or however old he is.

As for how this relates to Stratomatic, the game's manual describes the clutch hitting rating as...

Strat-O-Matic's exclusive clutch hitting formula measures the outcome of every baserunner that the batter affected during the year. This detailed approach provides a true measurement of the batter's clutch hitting ability. Our system is implemented with 2 outs and runners in scoring position because in real-life that is traditionally the most difficult time to "come through" with a base hit. If the batter fails, there are no more chances to drive in those runners. Most batters will see their average go down in the clutch -- both in real-life and with our system.

Breaking down a 500 at-bat season (or sometimes less than 200 at-bats) to 2 outs with runners in scoring position is an arbitrary division, just like batting average on Tuesdays or homeruns hit in the first game of the series. My team is loaded with OBP type guys (Abreu, Sweeney, Berkman, Koskie to name a few). So because a lot of them have low 'clutch' ratings my team is essentially being punished for hitting with runners on base. To quote A.W.E.S.O.M-O from South Park "lame".