How Clutch Is Ronnie Belliard?

In tonight's game between the St Louis Cardinals and the Los Angeles Dodgers, I found myself rooting for Casey Blake to get on base in the bottom of the ninth just so we could see Ronnie Belliard come up. Washington Nationals' radio listeners will remember the commercial - 'Belliard bats over .300 with runners in scoring position'. (It's currently at .281.) So how clutch is he?

It's well known in the sabermetric world that clutch hitting doesn't exist. Actually, that's not true. Sabermetrics actually argues that by the time we work out whether a hitter is clutch or not, his career is almost over. It takes that many plate appearances to remove the uncertainty. From season-to-season it's not supposed to be a repeatable skill. How does Belliard look on that basis? Is he feasting one year, only to suffer famine the next?

Season-by-season, excluding a 1998 cup of coffee, here's how he did. (Slash line = batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage)

         Season totals   RISP            Close&Late
1999     294/379/429     339/435/527     368/444/500
2000     268/354/389     307/423/474     247/348/289
2001     264/335/443     317/397/475     200/286/260
2002     211/257/287     167/232/200     208/295/264
2003     277/351/409     316/398/439     184/298/265
2004     282/348/425     284/394/454     316/400/453
2005     284/328/450     259/299/468     247/281/461
2006 CLE 291/387/420     269/352/355     320/393/480
2006 StL 237/295/371     192/288/269     125/152/156
2007     290/332/427     267/321/422     311/337/378
2008     287/372/473     305/380/524     200/375/380

When you break it out this way, you see that his record Close & Late is very wayward. Some season's he's hot, others he's not. There's almost no consistent sign of improvement with RISP, either. You could almost argue that he had a talent for rising to the occasion through about 2003, but after that he seems to get worse, until 2008.