Are you saying certain players don't respond to clutch situations better than others? What about athletes like Tom Brady and Michael Jordan? Different sport but the same pressure would apply, no?
If you look at Jordan's clutch splits / playoff splits throughout his career, they're actually pretty similar to his regular season ones... e.g., he has more PPG in the postseason but it's because he played more minutes. That's not to say that clutch might not exist in sports like basketball--for example, a recent study found a small but significant difference in FT% in clutch situations (about 2%). But in professional baseball, specifically, as distinguished from, say, college or amateur baseball, there has been no significant clutch split observed, nor has a statistically significant, predictive "clutch hitting skill" been found.
