Jacob Luft is paid to write about baseball and yet he is not good at writing about baseball.

See for yourself.

Talk baseball all season long with SI.com's Jacob Luft in Baseball Chatter, a journal for hot topic debates, Sabermetric ramblings and reader-driven discussions. (emphasis mine)

The R in SABR stands for Research. So this oughtta be great.

With the MVP races in both leagues going down the wire, you are going to hear and read a lot about "big hits" and "clutchness" in the next few weeks.

Come on dude, get with it! Clutchiness!

Those moments are fun and I enjoy them as much as the next baseball fan, but they help to obscure an important point about baseball that seems to have been lost amid all the talk of "clutchness" lately: early runs are more important.

(1) The next baseball fan thinks big hits win games, so you probably enjoy those moments less.
(2) The “important point” is not so much “lost” as it is “wrong.”

Riddle me this: Given the choice, would you rather have your team score first in a game or last? I asked a Yankees fan and rabid Alex Rodriguez-hater in the office this question the other day: Without knowing anything else that happens in a particular game, would you rather have A-Rod hit a three-run home run in the first inning of a game or the ninth inning? In other words, would you rather be guaranteed a three-run first inning and most likely a 3-0 lead to start the game or take your chances and hope that a three-run home run in the ninth will win or tie the game?

(1) The last sentence could just as well read:
In other words, would you rather take your chances that a three-run first inning lead will hold up for the rest of the game, or be guaranteed three runs late in the game?
(2) WHAT KIND OF INANE QUESTION IS THIS? Man reaches first base to lead off an inning. It is useful to ask: how much better is Man on Second, 0 Out versus Man on First, 0 Out? If you could press a button which would leave Man on Second, 0 Out 70% of the time and None On, 1 Out the other 30%, would you press the button? This is a question about base stealing and an answer recommends a strategy.
But a definitive answer to Luft's question matters not at all. Whenever teams are at bat, they try to score. As much as possible. Like, always. Like, Arod doesn't decide to open the game with a 3-run HR and think about bitches the rest of the game.
(3) Would you rather look like Jacob Luft or think like him?

If you answered ninth inning instead of first, then you have been drinking way too much of the clutchness Kool-Aid. Baseball is a lot like hockey and soccer in this respect: scoring first is huge.

Yes, so tell your favorite team: when it's up at the plate, try to score.
I'm surprised he mentioned soccer because that example makes more transparent two ways in which this argument is retarded. First, the better team will tend to score first more often. More importantly, as reader Eddie so eloquently puts it, these are all sports where NOT MANY POINTS ARE SCORED AT ALL AND THEREFORE OF COURSE THE PERSON WHO SCORES FIRST USUALLY WINS. Mr. Luft, your SABR membership card, please?

I looked up every team's record in 2006 when it scores first in a game compared to when its opponent scored first.

This probably took a few minutes. Some better things you could've done with that time:

• taken a stroll
• listened to a song
• practiced writing your name in cursive
• thrown some darts
• held down your Backspace key until what you'd written until now was gone

But we'll look at the fruits of your labor.

Here's what I found (through Monday's games; teams are in order of current standings):

American League
Team, Record when scoring first (Record when opponent scores first)
East
New York: 55-22 (31-34)
Boston: 50-25 (26-42)
Toronto: 51-22 (24-47)
Baltimore: 43-28 (17-53)
Tampa Bay: 32-44 (25-42)

Central
Detroit: 59-25 (27-33)
Minnesota: 53-17 (31-42)
Chicago: 48-30 (35-31)
Cleveland: 52-25 (16-49)
Kansas City: 31-29 (23-61)

West

Oakland: 50-21 (32-40)
Los Angeles: 56-25 (21-42)
Texas: 41-24 (32-47)
Seattle: 41-24 (27-50)

The aggregate winning percentage of AL teams when they score first is .647. The aggregate winning percentage of AL teams when they don't score first is .375. Compare those figures to the AL's aggregate winning percentage in all games: .513. (It's not .500 because of interleague play.) You end up with a deviation of plus-133 when scoring first and minus-139 when not scoring first. (Again, interleague play ruins the symmetry of this.) This is all assuming my arithmetic is correct, and I'm about as good as math as you would expect for a history major.

Majoring in history is no excuse for poor arithmetic. Plus it's not your arithmetic that's bothersome, it's your tragically poor grasp of statistics. Also, you meant “at math,” but I'm as good at proofreading my work published in nationally distributed magazines as you would expect for a math major.
By the way, Jacob Luft, I think you are a bad writer -- just wanted to make that clear.

National League
Team, Record when scoring first (Record when opponent scores first)
East
New York: 64-18 (24-36)
Florida: 51-26 (22-45)
Philadelphia: 47-26 (25-45)
Atlanta: 47-28 (22-46)
Washington: 45-25 (16-58)

Central
St. Louis: 53-21 (23-46)
Cincinnati: 45-17 (26-55)
Houston: 53-25 (17-47)
Milwaukee: 37-21 (28-58)
Pittsburgh: 33-25 (26-61)
Chicago: 43-22 (14-65)

West
Los Angeles: 47-22 (25-44)
San Diego: 45-25 (29-43)
San Francisco: 53-30 (19-41)
Arizona: 48-18 (20-57)
Colorado: 46-21 (21-55)

Let's do the same drill here. The NL's aggregate winning percentage when scoring first: .671. When not scoring first: .308. Overall, the NL's winning percentage is about .487. So the deviation is plus-184 for scoring first and minus-179 for not scoring first.

OK. The analysis:

You can see the value in this statistic when you look at the bad teams. The Nationals' overall winning percentage is .431. But when they score first, they are a .642 ballclub. Even the Pirates and Royals are winning teams when they score first. In fact, there is only one team in the majors with a losing record when it scores first: Tampa Bay (.421). Nobody else is close to that bad. (I'm not really sure how this happened. The Devil Rays have allowed a ton of runs, but not the most in the league, and certainly not by as wide a margin as you would expect for them to be this bad when scoring first.)

HEY DIPSHIT, did you notice that bad teams tend to have fewer games played in which they score first? You even ordered the teams by record! It is so painfully obvious only a braindead history major wouldn't ... nevermind.
Also, the Rays' pen is bad, but two AL teams have worse bullpen ERA. TB's higher BAA means they've probably allowed more inherited runners to score. Isn't doing this sort of research part of your job? U R like sucky.

But to expect any of this empirical evidence to have any sway in the MVP voting would be unrealistic.

Unrealistic, yes. To desire this, moronic.

After all, this is an era of small-sample size theater, when we focus on ridiculous statistics like "batting average in close-and-late situations." Do you know who the current leader is in that silly statistic? Florida's Wes Helms, who has 19 hits in 45 at-bats (.422). Ladies and gentlemen, your King of Clutch for 2006 is a bench player on a team stocked primarily with rookies.

I know you write to feed the kids, but I hope your (conjecturally tiny) brain appreciates that Wes Helms has nothing to do with whether BA in close/late is a ridiculous statistic. (Were it a useful statistic, it would just mean he's undervalued; the shit about rookies is obviously irrelevant.) The small sample size point, I agree with.

I'm not saying clutch hitting doesn't exist at all. For the most part, I do believe clutchness exists, but only to the extent that most good hitters are still good in critical situations, just as they are during other points of a game.

But this is no extent at all! Also, your article is called “The myth of clutch” and this is your evidence? HIRE THIS MAN. Treated with maximum generosity, the list of records you previously assembled should be interpreted to mean clutch hitting doesn't matter. Now you're acting like you presented evidence to say clutch hitting doesn't exist! WTF?!

David Ortiz is clutch. George Brett was clutch.

So clutch hitting is not a myth. I'm very confused.

I'll take my chances with either of those two guys in a close-and-late situation, but I wouldn't mind having any other great hitter up either: Willie Mays, Tony Gwynn, Mike Schmidt, etc.

You're hurting for words, a? A (seemingly arbitrary) list of three great (but not especially clutch) players, first and last names? Three more: Bonds, Ruth, Clemente. Three more: Mantle, Pujols, Brett. FUCK! Already mentioned Brett, sorry.

And don't be so quick to discount the value of add-on runs in the middle innings.

I know: runs are runs, no matter when they're scored...

Breaking a game open early with a home run is more valuable than a late, "clutch" home run.

...and you lost me. Also, it's bullshit that you put quotation marks around clutch. Punctuation is a poor substitute for argument.
I guess the problem with sportswriting is that you cannot express the (correct) opinion that early and late runs are equally good (or that offense and defense are equally important); for some reason you have to pick something.
This practice is bad for sportswriting. You know what's good for sportswriting (but bad for punters)? Shit like this. (Thanks to reader Donovan for the tip. See, if you show me something, maybe I will write about it, unless you are Boris.)
Let's finish up here.

It means the other team is going to use mop-up pitchers the rest of the game and allow your hitters to feast even more. It puts the game away early so you don't have to worry about winning it later and it means less stress for your starting pitcher and your bullpen.

I chose the clutch/late home run, but I told my bullpen and starting pitcher, so they're not feeling any stress.