You can read more from Dr. Roland A. Carlstedt at The Carlstedt Protocol/Mental Game

"Carlstedt's findings have shown players who perform the best during "clutch" moments display high levels of hypnotic susceptibility and repressive coping, and low levels of neuroticism."

What players are these? This very article mentions how you really can't mathematically note who is clutch, because there's only very few people who seem significantly clutch (and these people are well within the alpha level of the study).

If there exist virtually no clutch hitters, then Carlstedt is examining players who are PERCEIVED to be clutch. And, it seems perfectly reasonable to me, that players who are perceived to be clutch are going to be the ones who demonstrate low levels of neuroticism. So it's kind of self-explanatory here.

"Revisiting the Soriano and Yankees situation, using the above methods one could have generated a comprehensive neuropsychophysiological profile on Soriano extending back to when he was first scouted and signed. This data would provide information on numerous measures including brain functioning and heart rate variability during baseline conditions devoid of tasks and stress, during practice or training and during actual competition. Other tests and measures including assessment of PHO factors and critical moments analyses would have rounded out the evaluation battery. This battery could have been administered to all Yankee players extending down into their minor league organization. Using this approach and protocol the Yankees could have an internal database of psychological and psychophysiological performance as well as access to a league-wide database. The data would have revealed Soriano’s mental and physiological response tendencies and actual functioning during peak performance and used for comparative purposes whenever performance problems arose such as during the 2003 playoffs."

It seems to me that this is simply an issue of small sample size. As a student of sport psychology, I can certainly see how this psych history and physiological tests might unveil some kind of issue or pattern that could be attacked and rectified. But, as a student of math and psychology statistics, I find it far more likely that the playoffs were merely a small sample size.

David,
your last line reminds me of the story in Bill James' Historical Abstract about Leo Durocher giving a young pitcher a shot of whisky before games, to calm him down. Branch Rickey was none to happy about it, and the pitcher was shipped out.

My golf swing gets much better after a few beers, because I'm not thinking of my mechanics, not trying to micromanage them, which usually leads to over compensating something.

I think they call it "swing oil" for a reason. :)