Do Clutch And Choke Players Exist?

The question is as old as time itself...can an athlete be a clutch player or a choke artist? Over at PTU most of us believe that the phenomenon of clutch players is real, although a select few of us think it is a bunch of crap. For those who don't believe, ask yourself this question: Would Bill Buckner have missed that routine ground ball if this was a spring training game? Did the pressure of the situation come into play? Interestingly enough, Buckner was a good regular season fielder. Even though he was near the end of his career in 1986, he had the 3rd fewest errors among 1B in the AL.

Skeptics will point to complex statistical analyses that don't find any evidence that being clutch is "real". You can find prominent examples of this in a meta-analysis here by David Grabiner. First of all, many of these studies try to tie the value of a clutch player back to wins. I don't think this makes sense for a sport like baseball where it really is a team sport. The focus needs to be on individual statistics. I'll give these studies credit for being somewhat thorough in trying to eliminate factors such as specialist lefty pitchers and better postseason competition, but when it comes down to it I'm not sure "clutch" is something easily measured by statistics.

Here is how I break this argument down very simply, understanding this is theory and not easy to prove. Any given player has an average ability level at their respective sport. Their performance fluctuates naturally over time, but generally they have a range around their average (let's call this X). Next we add in high pressure situations, which range on a scale and are admittedly subjective. Every player will fall into one of three buckets when exposed to higher pressure situations:
1)Their "X" does not deviate significantly
2)Their "X" is significantly better (on average) in high pressure situations
3)Their "X" is significantly worse (on average) in high pressure situations

1= average, 2= clutch, 3=choker

I would expect that the vast majority of players fall into category 1, with only a small percentage falling into category 2 or 3. I think this fact, along with the highly subjective nature of defining things like high pressure and clutch situations, are the reason no one has proved this out scientifically. It is like finding a needle in a haystack. However, I'm going to go out on a limb and say from my years of watching sports that this phenomenon does exist, even if it is difficult to measure with statistics.

Now that I've made my case, let the debate begin (I'm looking at you M@d $cientist)...