Both ZiPS and PECOTA seems to love Ortiz, but I'm sticking to my guns and this as good a place as any to say it: I don't think he comes within a country mile of 556 HRs. That means he has to hit 330 homers between now and when he retires. Only 5 players have even hit 300 past age 32. Three of them were on the juice (Bonds, Raffy, McGwire) and the other two are named Ruth and Aaron.

The RBIs are not entirely within Ortiz's control, of course, but only two players have ever had more than 1,000 RBI in the 32 and beyond career: Ruth and Bonds. Hell, there's only 15 players to reach 800 or more. And that list has both PED guys (Bonds, Raffy, etc.) and a Coors wonder (Big Cat).

The doubles are more possible although there are still only 11 guys to have managed that number in their 32 and beyond career.

I wonder what Mo Vaughn's zips career projection looked like the year he signed with the Angels.

11 for 14 career in SB's.

he can run too!!

Really, those are HoF numbers.

Not original by any means, but I really believe that the Mo Vaughn comparison is the most valid. I don't see how Ortiz's body holds up long enough.

Even with the hardboiled egg whites, I'll take the under on that. The way under.

Really, those are HoF numbers.

They probably are - if he gets to them. But the question is whether and to what extent those numbers will be discounted by the voting populace because he was "just a DH".

-- MWE

I don't see how Ortiz's body holds up long enough.

The Sox have come up with a special diet to keep him healthy; it's called Petunia Juice

I think the Ortiz's incredible post-season performance and well deserved clutch hitting reputation will more than cancel out the fact that he is "just a dh"

ZiPS gives Mo Vaughn a couple more great years with Angels and then has him dropping off sharply (and the actual year one was better than the pessimistic projection).

There are important differences between the two. Most importantly, Vaughn's offense was far, far more reliant on an extremely high BABIP than Ortiz's offense. Vaughn's BABIPs during his big Red Sox years were .345, .375, .349, .373, .388, and .388. Ortiz is at .312 for his career and has been better than .330 once. "Old players skills" isn't really a "Lots of three true outcomes" issue, it's a "low-speed, high BABIP" issue.

Outside of BABIP, Ortiz kills Vaughn in essentially measure of offense - Ortiz may be big and fat, but his excellence is based on a far broader variety of skills than Vaughn.

I like the smooth path. It's always funny to see longterm projections that have random ups and downs based on who their comps were that year.

If he gets those numbers, or anything reasonably close, he's in for sure and deservedly so.

But I don't buy that aging curve either. In addition to the numbers in #1, ZiPS has him playing more games from 32-40 than he has through age 31, enough games to make him top 50 all-time.

Put me down for the under. My money is that he becomes increasingly slowed by injury and is essentially done as a useful player by 2012.

The age 40 prediction of .290/.376/.500 would be one of the top 10 performances of all time. The others- Cobb, Baines, Fisk, Moises Alou, Mays, Edgar Martinez, Henderson, Collins, Darrell Evans and Winfield. The age 31 list, of course has names like Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Thome, Sheffield...Lean lasts longer.

Put me down for the "under" too.

I really don't get the Mo Vaughn comp, othen than they were / are 2 big guys who play(ed) for the RS.

Ortiz' K / BB rates are better than Vaughn's.

Through age 30, Vaughn's last great year, Vaughn had 519 BBs, 954 Ks, 0.544

Through age 30, Ortiz had 540 BBs, 796Ks, 0.678.

Taking into account age 31, the gap increases,0.724 for Ortiz, 0.53 for Vaughn.

As it is, Ortiz has only 74 walks less than Vaugh's totals, while he has 530 fewer Ks.

Ortiz, at ages 30 and 31, had more BBs than Ks. Vaugh never came close to doing that. The closest he came to a 1:1 BB / K rate in a full season, was in 1996, 0.62, worse than Ortiz' career rate.

ZIPS project Ortiz to have a steal this year, but does ZIPS know that Jason Kendall is in the NL now?

The reason why I'm pessimistic on this projection, isn't any of this Mo Vaughn flummery. It's a question of common sense. I can imagine, scenario's where Ortiz puts up this line, and they are actually pretty reasonable. I can also see many scenario's where he greatly misses these numbers. What I don't see is scenario's where he greatly exceeds these numbers.

So to simplify, lets just look at HR's. Lets say he has a 33% chance of hitting 560 career HR's and a 33% chance of hitting 460 HR's that means he has a 33% chance of 660 HRs? I just don't see it..

I think Ortiz most likely outcome is to retire with between 450-500 HR's and perhaps still being a hall of famer

I think you guys mis understood. I didn't need instruction on how Ortiz is better than Vaughn ever was. That much is pretty much obvious.

Key words from Dan here:

Ortiz may be big and fat......

Sorry to parse words and pick just a few of them out of a post, (I don't like it when people do that to me) but this the main point. Show me guys with his height and weight, and EXISTING medical history that had long careers and didn't break down. There may be a few, but the odds are against him having a long HEALTHY career. Of course if he does have a long healthy career, then there is little doubt he will put up HOF numbers.

So to simplify, lets just look at HR's. Lets say he has a 33% chance of hitting 560 career HR's and a 33% chance of hitting 460 HR's that means he has a 33% chance of 660 HRs? I just don't see it..

I don't think that's how it works, even simplified. For one thing because there's a much greater than a 1% chance that he comes in *below* 460 HRs.

That said, while I agree that it doesn't seem *implausible* it also strikes me as rather optimistic. And he doesn't need to get all that near those numbers to go in, potential PED revelations aside. You could lop the last three years entirely off and readjust his rate stats to the final career rates shown above and he'd get in.

There's a limit to the "comparable" approach that people aren't generally mentioning. The approach seems to be, find a player who had a similar career up to the same age as the player in question, and is also similar in other ways (build, etc.) If you look how the comparable player did later in his career, you'll know how the player in question will do.

The problem should be obvious. The sample size is one. Mo Vaughn, while perhaps being likely to perform in a certain way once he joined the Angels, was not predestined for that performance - a lot of things could have happened.

Now if you look at 15 or 20 players who are truly similar to Ortiz, and most of the 15 or 20 failed to age well, or aged particularly well, that would be meaningful. But you can't just look at one other player - no matter how comparable - and assert that you know how well someone is likely to age. I see this type of logic a lot.

By the way, I don't think Ortiz will age particularly well, for the reasons people have already stated. I just don't like the "If Mo Vaughn didn't, than Ortiz won't either" argument.

Stargell?

Stargell?

Stargell was still playing the outfield at age 34. I don't know how well he was playing it, but one problem with Ortiz is that he's got nowhere left to slide down the defensive spectrum if he gets older/slower/fatter. He's already a DH. The moment he slips to even a league-average hitter, his value all but disappears, although I suspect that Big Papi could probably ride his leader/clutch reputation to a couple of seasons as a DH even if he's putting up OPS+'s around 100 or just below, although I doubt that'd add much to his Hall-of-Fame resume at that point.

Basically, I agree with the consensus here. The numbers shown here are plausible and would make Ortiz a deserving 1st-ballot Hall-of-Famer. I would, however, bet the under on the PA/HR/RBI numbers shown here.

Stargell's age 31 BBRef comps include Willie Horton, Frank Howard, Danny Tartabull, Tim Salmon, Ryan Klesko. Some big fellas there. Ortiz' age 31 BBRef comps are mostly either active (Giambi, Sexson, Konerko, Berkman, Delgado) or were fairly thin (McCovey,McGriff, Bagwell). Only Kent Hrbek fits the body type. The cumulative record of the big guys after age 35 is pretty uninspired. ZIPS is projecting Ortiz to be the best of all of them, thin or fat, after age 35.

Ortiz does have a good health and performance record from 27-31, and he is a DH, but still.

I've seen some recent pics of Papi out of his uni, and he doesn't really look all that fat-just muscle upon muscle. Weight is weight and can lead to knee and back problems either way, but it's not foregone that he'll eat his way out of the league in 4 years like Mo did.

I'll take the under too, but as John notes, Ortiz is Big Papi, not Amorphous Blob Papi.

I've seen some recent pics of Papi out of his uni,

I sense a Page Six Blind Item in John's future

JUST ASKING
Which Primate has been seen sneaking in and out of a beloved Boston baseballer's apartment at late hours? Spies say they're trying to keep their relationship under wraps, but only a fool could ignore the obvious.

The Sox have come up with a special diet to keep him healthy; it's called Petunia Juice

I first read this as Pedroia Juice, which certainly caused a quick double-take.

Show me guys with his height and weight, and EXISTING medical history that had long careers and didn't break down.

let me think:

Willie Stargell
Boog Powell
Harmon Killebrew
Tony Gwynn (does he count? he weighed as much as big Papi anyway)
Kirby Puckett (?)
Ernie Lombardi

how did Powell not break down? He was finished as a hitter after his age 33 season and out of the league by the time he was 36.

And while Stargell could still hit, he broke down too. Never played more than 126 games the last eight years of his career and under 75 four times.

The Sox have come up with a special diet to keep him healthy; it's called Petunia Juice

I first read this as Pedroia Juice, which certainly caused a quick double-take.

I think it was levski's intention to make this connection, "Petunia" being an ill-conceived nickname for Pedroia around there parts.

Show me guys with his height and weight, and EXISTING medical history that had long careers and didn't break down.


let me think:

...
Boog Powell

Some of your examples are good ones - Stargell, Gwynn, even Lombardi. But Boog Powell's last season where he was worth a damn was at age 33 and his last season period was at age 35. Actually, Boog's a much better comp for Ortiz than I would have guessed. Through age 31, Boog had an OPS+ of 135 in 1,653 games, 291 HR, 1,091 RBI, an MVP award and two other top-3 MVP finishes. That compares to Ortiz's OPS+ of 139 in 1,192 games, 266 HR, 880 RBI, and 2 top-3, 5 top-5 MVP finishes.

Boog finished with 339 career HR in 2,042 games and no Hall-of-Fame support.

And while Stargell could still hit, he broke down too. Never played more than 126 games the last eight years of his career and under 75 four times.

He also didn't have the option of just DH'ing though. That gives Big papi a big boost.

So to simplify, lets just look at HR's. Lets say he has a 33% chance of hitting 560 career HR's and a 33% chance of hitting 460 HR's that means he has a 33% chance of 660 HRs? I just don't see it..

I don't think that's how it works, even simplified.

I think the point is that if the above projection is the weighted mean, then there should be a fair chance at an optimistic projection where Ortiz surpasses these numbers. And that's hard to see, at this point (as evidenced by the many who have "taken the under" in this thread.)

"He also didn't have the option of just DH'ing though. That gives Big papi a big boost."

Depends whether you're talking about career milestones, or about HOF candidacy. For the latter, he might be better off with 60% playing time, if it took away the DH stigma.

Also, Gwynn's health was a serious issue for him from age-35 onward, largely due to the weight and the effect that it had on his legs.

That little of a decline to age 40 is essentially impossible. This projection tool fails the test of giving remotely sensible output. Nobody has ever been that good at age 40. Nobody. Ever.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/leaders_40_bat.shtml

Nobody has ever been that good at age 40. Nobody. Ever.

Am I missing something? Pretty clearly Baines was.

Isn't Frank Thomas a decent comp, in some ways, for Big Papi? He has no "speed" at all and yet he's still going. Except for bat speed, how is Ortiz going to slow down and have it much cost him? Yes, he might not score on some hits. So he moves to 5th in the order at the end of his career. He already gets almost zero infield hits. The guy hit .332 while losing something like 15 or so hits to the infield shift.

If I had to bet, I'd bet against the greatest man in the western and northern hemispheres reaching 556 homers in his career but it'll be because he can't hit. Speed ain't his game.

Nobody has ever been that good at age 40. Nobody. Ever.

Depends on the criteria of course. 296/390/557 ...

that would be the highest OPS in an age 40 season (to lazy to check post-40 seasons) ... by 25 points over Cobb.

it would be the highest SLG by 15 points over Fisk.

it would presumably be the 11th best OBP (Rose is 10th at 390).

OPS+ is hard to figure, but using 2007 lgavg*, I get 141 which would be tied for 3rd (with Edgar fittingly enough).

119 games is nothing special.

22 HR is, surprisingly to me, 6th.

85 RBI is, surprisingly, 8th.

There's enough in there to keep me from saying it would be the best ever, but it would be among the best ever.

And that does seem like a silly mean projection.

Still, it's the games played that seems the most off. He's projected to play in 153 this year, about the average of the last 3. That seems sensible enough except it doesn't seem to entail any injury risk. ZiPS expects essentially no substantial missed time due to injury over the next 5 years. Again, seems like a bad mean projection. (Or is it a median projection -- that would be more defensible.)

Isn't Frank Thomas a decent comp, in some ways, for Big Papi? He has no "speed" at all and yet he's still going. Except for bat speed, how is Ortiz going to slow down and have it much cost him?

Yes and no. Frank Thomas is a somewhat poor comp for Ortiz for the mirror image of why Mo Vaughn is a poor comp as outlined in #14 above. Thru age 31, Frank Thomas had a career OPS+ of 169. Since then, his OPS+ is 139. So he's lost 30 points of OPS+ in his older age. Ortiz's career OPS+ is already 139. If he loses 30 points off of that, he's sitting at 109 and an OPS+ of 109 for a guy who can only DH isn't all that valuable - you'd think replacement-level DH should be right around, if not slightly better than, a league average hitter.

Moises Alou just finished outperforming that last year at 40 as well. That said, the guys who perform well at and after age 40 are athletes... players like Alou, Henderson, Rose, Aaron, Mays, Fisk, Winfield, Bonds. Baines was a very good athlete. Brian Downing was a conditioning maniac. Molitor was a tremendously gifted athlete, who kept himself in great shape after he turned 30.

Of course, the one guy who performed well with the bat at age 40 who was mostly a career DH like Papi, was Edgar Martinez, the guy who sparked this discussion.

Unsaid in all of this discussion is that fact that Papi's longevity should be helped immensely by the labor-saving of the DH role. Not having to play the field should lengthen his career considerably. I don't think he will get to 556 homers, but he should get to 450.

Walt, those are the career #s you are looking at. The age-40 projection for Papi is .290/.376/.500 in 505 PA. I think that's high, but not ridiculously so.

And I made a mistake of saying that the DH-longvity issue was "unsaid". It's been mentioned further up.

Age curves are tricky when you try and predict five and six years or more into the future. The way you predict growth (or, in this case, decline) from real statistics and the way you would do so from projected statistics is tricky. Very tricky actually.

Just picking ">20 games missed" as a benchmark, and stopping at age 31 (Ortiz's age last year)...

Boog Powell played <142 games at ages 24, 25 and 29-31.

Mo Vaughn played <142 games at ages 26-27, 29, and 31.

Willie Stargell played <142 games at 26-28 and 30-31.

Tony Gwynn played <142 games at 28 and 30-31.

Frank Thomas played <142 games at 26, 28, and 31.


David Ortiz played <142 games at 24-27, the last of those because he was competing for playing time his first year in Boston.


I don't know what to make of this, but despite the occasional ding Ortiz hasn't really missed much time in the last 5 years for health reasons. Each of the others I listed were already having material injuries by that time (missing >20 games in at least 3 of their age-27-to-31 seasons), and went on to have plenty of health issues from then on. I'm assuming that's why ZiPS and other projections seem to think Ortiz will age well. (Well, that, and he plays a "position" that reduces wear and tear.)

The reason I don't know what to make of it is that I don't know if that's a reasonable projection to make. Intuitively I'd expect him to break down over time. Knees and calves and backs can only take so much. But what do I know? Nearly every baseball player is heavier than a normal person, but nearly every baseball player is in much better shape than a normal person.


FWIW, doing a search on B-R for "weight 230", I also came up with...

Cliff Floyd, who only had 3 seasons with 142+ games through age 31.

Dave Parker, who played <142 games at ages 25 and 29-31.

I also tried "weight 250", and got Sabathia, Colon, Garces, and other players who clearly weigh more than Ortiz.

Of course, the one guy who performed well with the bat at age 40 who was mostly a career DH like Papi, was Edgar Martinez, the guy who sparked this discussion.

Edgar was also well known in the weightlifting / bodybuilding / powerlifting community as a conditioning maniac. Yes, even with his various injuries.

So, the question to people who have seen him without his shirt and in shorts, is Papi, Big Papi, or Amorphous Blob Papi?

I don't see Ortiz aging that well, partly because he's such a big guy. I don't think he gets much more than maybe 400 homers. But he's already a Red Sox legend, his reputation as a post-season hero and clutch-hitter will help and the WS rings will probably push him over the HOF edge.

I need to go back and double-check some of the players I listed above. I looked at their games played by age, not by year. Obviously another factor in games played is whether it was a strike year.

(...after researching...)

Boog Powell missed 20+ games at ages 24, 25, and 29-31 29, and 31.

Mo Vaughn missed 20+ games at ages 26-27, 29, and 31.

Frank Thomas missed 20+ games at 26, 28, and 31.

Stargell, Gwynn, Ortiz, Floyd, and Parker remain as they are listed above.


I also overlooked Killebrew yesterday; he missed 20+ games at ages 24 and 29. He and Thomas are two of the better ones in this crop in terms of injuries before age 32; and they are two of the better ones (from this crop) in terms of games played from age 32 on.

Hey, here's another one: Eddie Murray. He missed 20+ games in his age-30 season. The next time he missed significant time was in his age-39 season.

Walt, those are the career #s you are looking at.

Silly highlighting drawing my eye to the wrong line.

OK, OBP would be ???
SLG would be 6th
OPS would be 10th

So substantially less historic than it looked and definitely not the best ever. Still seems a bit silly as a mean projection to me.

By the way, my opinions about the aging curve have nothing to do with Ortiz's body. Yes, in general, I expect big guys to break down more often than fit guys but he's not playing the field hardly at all so maybe that counter-acts it. I just think it's silly to expect anyone to age that well. Many players will age that well of course, but it's silly to expect any of them to.

also David Ortiz, career 300 hitter, doesn't sound right either. I can't rule it out of course.

Anyway, ZiPS isn't a playing time projection system so I'm not sure what good these long-range projections do us. Certainly a system that doesn't account for injury risk somehow won't perform well projecting over 9 seasons. The average risk of a player missing, oh, 50+ games at least once in the next 5 years must be on the order of 25% I'd guess (that would be an annual risk of about 4% or about 1 player per every 3 teams' starting lineup). If those are the average odds (and obviously I'm just guessing), then for players in their 30s, the odds must be higher ... but maybe being a DH counter-acts much of that. The chances that such an injury would have long-term effects on durability and/or performance would seem to be pretty high.

Then you add in the risk of "mysterious early decline" and I just don't see how any player can be expected to play that many games from ages 31-40.

Here's a list of players I'd think of as "everyday" starters who played 112 or fewer games last year (72 or fewer games for Cs ... some missed games undoubtedly normal rest):

Giambi, (Glaus), G Anderson, Chavez, Crosby, Buck, Blalock, Alou, Rolen, Encarnacion??, Everett, A Gonzalez, Tracy??, Taveras??, Bradley.

Glaus just missed and I don't know how much playing time was expected for Encarnacion, Tracy and Taveras (or how much of their lost time was due to suckiness). Anyway, that's 11-15 players and I may have missed 1 or 2 (esp if they didn't play at all). And that's out of a fairly small pool of "full-time starters when healthy" and ignoring (or trying to) the numerous platoon arrangements, teams playing kids, etc. If you look at it as 254 starting positions, that's a 50+ game injury rate of 4-6%. If you look at it closer to 175-200 full-time positions (only 162 players qualified for the batting title last year), then we're as high as maybe a 7-8% annual rate.

Now, it's obvious that many on that list are the (now) chronically injured which is a comment on the long-term impacts. Still, to my knowledge, Buck, Blalock, Everett, Gonzalez, Tracy, Taveras and maybe Encarnacion have not had major injuries before. That would be a 2.5-4% risk of first-time major injury.

Still, to my knowledge, Buck, Blalock, Everett, Gonzalez, Tracy, Taveras and maybe Encarnacion have not had major injuries before. That would be a 2.5-4% risk of first-time major injury.

I've got to wonder how much being a DH would have protected those players. By taking a player out of the field, you do remove a significant source of injuries. It does seems unlikely that Ortiz would be able to maintain that level of effectiveness for so long, but I wonder if being permanent DH does really have a strong impact on reducing injury.

Is there any observation bias going on here? Meaning, is this the weighted mean projection for Ortiz, given that his career lasts this long? Someone mentioned this in the other thread, and Nate Silver commented on it regarding PECOTA rate projections. For VORP-like stats it's not a problem since you can account for a percentage of seasons played by replacement-level players. This is especially an issue for players with no defensive value, since if they're not hitting well they're not in the league anymore. (I believe this was at least mentioned upthread but I didn't see an answer.)

I don't want this conversation to turn thsi way or anything but, unless I am mistaken, Derek Jeter's weighted mean in PECOTA is 6.0 (in WARP) vs. Papi's 5.9 for this coming year. Again, I don't say this in order to argue that Jeter is better than Papi but just to demonstrate how hard it is for a DH to consistently put up the MVP like numbers needed to make the HOF. Jeter is nowhere near the hitter that Papi is, PECOTA hasn't been terribly nice to him this time around (according to some at BPro at least) and Jeter is a really bad defensive SS. Still, it appears that Jeter being a SS is enough to overcome all of this when compared to Papi.

Jay Jaffe also mentioned that Papi does not have the peak for the HOF according to JAWS. I am not a big believer in that system for a number of reasons (which deal more with how it is used then the numbers themselves) but it does demonstrate hwow even Papi' amazing offensive contributions may not be enough without ANY defensive value. I mean for as bad as Jeter is at SS, Jeter has a decent bit more defensive value that Papi.

All this is a long way of saying that no matter how great of a hitter he his, it is hard to have a HOF peak if you have no defensive value and the replacement level at your position for offense is so high.

There's a limit to the "comparable" approach that people aren't generally mentioning. The approach seems to be, find a player who had a similar career up to the same age as the player in question, and is also similar in other ways (build, etc.) If you look how the comparable player did later in his career, you'll know how the player in question will do.

The problem should be obvious. The sample size is one. Mo Vaughn, while perhaps being likely to perform in a certain way once he joined the Angels, was not predestined for that performance - a lot of things could have happened.

Now if you look at 15 or 20 players who are truly similar to Ortiz, and most of the 15 or 20 failed to age well, or aged particularly well, that would be meaningful. But you can't just look at one other player - no matter how comparable - and assert that you know how well someone is likely to age. I see this type of logic a lot.

By the way, I don't think Ortiz will age particularly well, for the reasons people have already stated. I just don't like the "If Mo Vaughn didn't, than Ortiz won't either" argument.

Dizzy, this not a very nuanced reading or interpretation of what I wrote. Yes, I only gave one example, Mo Vaugh, as one that quite frankly evokes the imagery of what I was getting at, but I ALSO wrote

Show me guys with his height and weight, and EXISTING medical history that had long careers and didn't break down. There may be a few, but the odds are against him having a long HEALTHY career.

I didn't do the work, in that I didn't go and research it to come up with a list, because intuitively I know that it is a short list. Thats the point. Kevin tried to come up with a list, but it's a strange one indeed, including guys that DID break down, or including guys that have different body sizes and shapes. (i.e. Gwynn who is 5 inches shorter than Ortiz.)

Another point is you can't really use the height and weights at BBRef because often they are incorrect or they show the weight a guy had when he first came into the league, but don't represent what a guy ended up at. So how do you compare? It's pretty hard to do accurately.

One last thing. While Szym's projection predicts 2007 to be Papi's best year, there's no evidence in the record it should be. He's gotten better every year for the past 6. Why the sudden prediction of a falloff now? This season? 2008? He has no real injury history and he's prefectly healthy.

One last thing. While Szym's projection predicts 2007 to be Papi's best year, there's no evidence in the record it should be. He's gotten better every year for the past 6. Why the sudden prediction of a falloff now? This season? 2008? He has no real injury history and he's prefectly healthy.

Because he's not athletic, he's on the wrong side of 30, and his improvement last year was BABIP while his HR/F and GB% both went in the wrong direction.

He was also nursing a shoulder injury from May to August.

He's still getting better.

Reconcile these two statements:

He has no real injury history and he's prefectly healthy.

He was also nursing a shoulder injury from May to August.

OK:

He was hurt for a little while with a nagging injury but completely healed before the season ended and there are no lingering problems.

One last thing. While Szym's projection predicts 2007 to be Papi's best year, there's no evidence in the record it should be. He's gotten better every year for the past 6. Why the sudden prediction of a falloff now? This season? 2008?.

Because there's no projection system in the world that's going to project a 32-year-old player to continue to improve?

There are a lot of similarities between Vaughn and Ortiz and for that reason, the former is a good comp for the latter. But Vaughn suffered a pretty freakish injury in his Angels days, which eventually ended his career pretty early. His weight was, no doubt, a drag on his ability to recover, but it wasn't the only reason he was unable to continue playing baseball.

Having Ortiz DH may help him to avoid such injuries. I hope he stays in reasonable shape and keeps hitting the way this projections suggests.

One last thing. While Szym's projection predicts 2007 to be Papi's best year, there's no evidence in the record it should be. He's gotten better every year for the past 6. Why the sudden prediction of a falloff now? This season? 2008? He has no real injury history and he's prefectly healthy.

Are you honestly suggesting the mean projection should exceed his highest demonstrated level of performance?

I just checked, and there is in fact a Department of Mathematical Sciences at West Point.

OK:

He was hurt for a little while with a nagging injury but completely healed before the season ended and there are no lingering problems.

Oh, I see. "He has no real injury history" means he was injured but is not currently injured, and "a little while" means most of last season. In other news, "I have cancer" means "I had a touch of lumbago last year."

Oh, I see. "He has no real injury history" means he was injured but is not currently injured, and "a little while" means most of last season. In other news, "I have cancer" means "I had a touch of lumbago last year."

I think kevin's point is that while Ortiz had an injury last year it wasn't enough for him to miss significant time, and to the extent it "held back" his performance it didn't prevent him from having one of his best years.

That said, if we're going to suggest his nagging injuries held back his performance at all, we should also project that he will (at a minimum) continue to have similar nagging injuries, which will similarly hold back his performance. I don't know if the examples I tried above are good comps for Ortiz but they do suggest that players having had multiple significant injuries in the 27-31 ages will continue having significant injuries at ages 32+. I don't know how it goes for less-significant injuries - they're hard to infer from the statistical record - but I have no reason to suspect it's different.

Personally I can't imagine that Ortiz would've done materially better last year had he been more healthy. And I can't imagine that the likelihood of him continuing to improve at age 32 is high enough for us to project it for 2008. But given his consistency in playing time over the last few years and the relatively-sheltered health of a DH, I'm OK with projecting he won't have a Vaughnesque breakdown.

The problem I have with this projection is that there is no chance whatsoever that Ortiz will exceed these numbers.

Compare it to the Alex Rodriguez career projection. I'd say the odds that A-Rod exceeds that projection are about as good as the odds that he fails to meet it. The Ortiz projection reads like a best case scenario shot.