A New Look at Pitcher Aging Patterns
In recent years it seems there's been a huge number of age defying pitchers. According to the research of Bill James,
players are supposed to peak at age 27, and have their prime around 27-30, but somebody forgot to tell a lot of current
hurlers. Roger Clemens is
winning Cy Youngs in his 40s. David Wells was a better pitcher in his late 30s and early 40s than he was a decade earlier.
Randy Johnson had a historic peak in his late 30s. Jaime Moyer never topped 14 win shares in a year before turning 35.
Since then he's done it five times.
Curt Schilling's been far better since turning 30. And then there's Woody Williams, and Kenny Rogers and Kevin Brown, and...
Well, you get the idea. Just how good are current pitchers aging, and more importantly - how well are they aging compared to
previous generations?
To figure this I took the info from Bill James's Win Shares book (and its annual updates) and put together a database
organized by age of the pitchers for each year of their career. I used every pitcher in major league history who had at
least 100 starts and a known birth year - 1179 guys in all. Let's cut the intro and get to the results. First, here's
the total list of win shares the pitchers earned at each age:
ALL 1179 PITCHERS - 132,680 WS
Age WS % of peak
15 0 0%
16 8 0.1%
17 36 0.3
18 162 1
19 685 6
20 1729 14
21 3327 28
22 5198 43
23 7511 63
24 9407 79
25 11153 93
26 11964 100
27 11883 99
28 11286 94
29 10692 89
30 9464 81
31 8430 70
32 6865 57
33 5767 48
34 4661 39
35 3661 31
36 2749 23
37 1894 16
38 1450 12
39 936 8
40 691 6
41 481 4
42 254 2
43 131 1
44 97 1
45 53 0.4
46 23 0.2
47 21 0.2
48 11 0.1
49 0 0
Looking at this chart, a few things stand out at first glance.
Age 26, not age 27 is the big year for the most pitcher, but it's very close either way. The real lesson I take from
this is that there isn't so much a Single Shining Peak
Year, as much is there is a standard prime - ages 25-29 here.
There are some problems with this list. First, it includes guys that are too damn young to really tell us anything about
aging patterns. Kyle Lohse, Jon Garland, C. C. Sabathia all make the 100 GS cut, but they don't really help us determine when
pitchers are peaking. Also, it includes guys from all sorts of different eras - the
pitchers box era (1876-1892), the deadball era (defined here as 1893-1919), and the
liveball era. The differences in the eras could seriously impact how
pitchers aged.
Let's break it down into four groups:
Pitchers' Box Guys
Deadballers
Liveballers born before 1960 (actually, 7/1/59)
Liveballers born in the 1960s
I want to separate the last group because enough of them are still playing and they could
gum up the data. Besides, the goal is to see how contemporary pitchers are doing
against previous generations. I'm including all pitchers and not just those still playing
because to leave out those who were forced out of the game because they weren't that good would
skew the data toward old-agers. Jack Armstrong was born within 12 months of Kenny
Rogers - just as fair we treat them as such. As for the guys since ‘69, we'll
just ignore them for now as they're likely to be a source of noise.
Also, to make the comparisons easier, I'll not look at total Win Shares but
at what percentage of the group's peak was reached at each age.
Age BOX DEAD LIVE 1960s
18 6 1 1 0
19 22 6 3 2
20 46 16 8 7
21 69 26 21 14
22 83 47 32 33
23 100 62 50 57
24 90 81 69 73
25 82 94 86 100
26 76 98 100 97
27 86 100 98 90
28 57 96 97 96
29 55 84 96 97
30 37 69 90 88
31 28 55 83 82
32 21 43 70 72
33 14 33 62 59
34 10 23 52 50
35 8 16 40 46
36 2 11 32 42* (1960-8)
37 0.5 8 22 26* (1960-7)
38 2 5 17 22* (1960-6)
39 X 3 12 12* (1960-5)
40 X 4 8 12* (1960-4)
Baseball was a very different game back in the days of Old Hoss and
the gang. They were as good at age 32 as contemporaries are at age 38. Shocking as it
sounds, tossing 600 innings a year isn't that good for the arm.
They aged so poorly that it can easily distract one from recognizing how badly
deadballers aged. These guys tended to be worked harder in their early 20s than
liveballers, and did fine in their prime, but once they hit age 29 they began a very rapid
descent. They aged a few years better than box'ers, but a few years worse than liveballers.
So much for the preliminaries, now for the main event: how are
contemporaries doing? In a shocking development, I don't see any evidence of improved aging patterns
until they reach their mid-30s. The gains are there, but it isn't always easy to see
how real it is because at the same time they rise up, they lose some of their pitchers.
This is an important point because there is good reason to think the guys born at in 1968-9 (well,
actually from 7/1/67 - 6/30/68 because that's how I set up the database) won't age as well
as the earlier bunch. Here's a complete list of guys born in those last 24 months that
pitched in baseballin 2004 (ordered from most to fewest win shares):
Flash Gordon, Mike Mussina, Kent Mercker, Cal Eldred, Paul Abbott, Kevin Appier, Shane Reynolds, Andy Ashby,
Hideo Nomo, and Donovan Osbourne.
That's a total of 34 win shares - 15 from Flash. The problem isn't that they're not likely to age as well as the Big Unit or
Jaime Moyer, but that only one or two of them has a chance to be as good as an aging Terry
Mulholland. Obviously, they'll keep their lead at age 35, and I think their age 36 lead
is safe, but after that I'm not sure that they'll do much better at all when everyone's done.
...um, so they're not aging better? Or just barely better? Let's
look a little closer at the numbers and see what we find. Let's divide them all into
decade-of-birth groups going back into the 1890s, the first decade where a large majority of pitchers
were liveballers:
Age 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s
20 15 1 7 6 12 12 9 7
21 27 14 13 21 22 27 26 14
22 41 26 20 23 38 38 39 33
23 50 33 33 40 50 67 60 57
24 72 51 56 60 69 80 77 73
25 93 68 85 71 88 90 91 100
26 94 88 100 87 100 100 100 97
27 95 93 75 100 99 92 94 90
28 97 100 91 98 85 83 86 96
29 100 94 94 90 97 82 82 97
30 96 91 92 88 86 73 72 88
31 87 89 79 81 94 59 60 82
32 66 77 66 66 64 59 56 72
33 70 68 70 61 55 41 46 59
34 58 55 60 52 46 37 36 50
35 44 43 47 42 29 30 28 46
36 30 39 34 30 21 26 23 42*
37 23 27 27 19 15 18 14 26*
38 16 28 18 12 11 13 8 22*
39 12 17 13 9 6 10 5 12*
40 8 10 5 6 5 10 4 12*
The 1960s have the earliest peak season. The things you learn when you dig
through the data!
Occasionally, the information is a bit fluky. For example, there's no reason
that I can tell for why the 1910s did so poorly at age 27. Sometimes the distribution of
Win Shares within the prime is a bit random. Odds are that's why it's as low as a 75
there.
Looking at all the data, things are getting a bit more interesting. Current
pitchers are aging much better than any recent ones as the previous 30 years' worth
of pitchers aged far worse than any other liveballers. Just look at age 35 -- the
1930s-50s are all at/under 30% of their peak value. Everyone else is 42% at worst. Mighty
stark contrast - - and a very unexpected one. I wouldn't have thought that a group of
pitchers that
combined to have 6 300-game winners, 3 other 280-game winners would be part of the
era that aged poorly, but that's exactly what this says.
How d'ya explain that? Well, looking at their early 20's, they were worked
harder than any other group, except maybe the 1890s. My guess is they were worked hard
young, a disproportionate percentage of them hurt their arms and could not go on, but
those that did could rack up the counting stats like no other group. Thus you can have
the bad overall aging patterns exist alongside all Seavers, Blylevens, Suttons,
Kaats, and Carltons.
Going back to the current pitchers, though they are aging better than the
previous three groups, they are not aging better than the 1890s-1920s guys. Age 36 and 40
are the only ones they top, and when the 1968-9 guys are done, that may not even be the
case.
Meanwhile, at age 33 and 34, they are worse than all those guys. What
gives? With all the medical care, new surgical procedures, and anti-inflammatories this
information doesn't make any sense.
Two issues are clouding the data, only one of which I can really adjust for. First, the one I
can't adjust for, is WWII. This has a huge impact on some of the earlier groups. It
doesn't impact the 1890s pitchers at all as they were all done by Pearl
Harbor and only one - Hod Lisenbee - came back during it. Hod earned zero win shares in his
1945 return. No impact there.
The 1900s guys had a definite impact -- the war artificially inflated their
Win Shares totals in their 30s. Several of these hurlers received a disproportionate share of their
career value in their mid-to-late 30s, which not-so-coincidentally came during the war. Topping the
list were Johnny Niggeling, Ed Heusser, Rip Sewell, all of whom earned over 50% of
their value in these years. They were not alone as other, rather talented pitchers such as
Claude Passeau, Bucky Walters, and Spud Chandler also earned around 1/3 of their
career value over the same timeframe.
Perhaps some were legitimate late bloomers, but even if
they were, the war excessively amplified their value in these years. Plus, there are still
others, such as Boom-Boom Beck, who tied a career high for single season Win Shares in 1945 at
age 40.
The impact on the next decade-group was even more drastic. Looking through
the database, I searched for examples where a pitcher had been pitching prior to
the war, lost some seasons, and then came back -- war-related lost years. I found 61 such
seasons for the 76 pitchers in this group. Their average age: 29.1 years. The war
reduced their prime, and thus made their production in their 30's a greater portion of their
overall value than it would have been.
The impact is not nearly as strong on the 1920s pitchers. Many, such as
Bob Lemon and Vic Raschi got a late start because of the war. Others, such as Warren
Spahn, had lost seasons of their own. It isn't as easy to estimate time lost because every
era has pitchers who don't start until age 26 or 27, or a guy who gets a cup of coffee at age
22 and does nothing for a while afterwards. The main impact would be that many guys had
their careers delayed, and thus had their arms less-taxed in their early 20s.
Given what happened to the 1930s-50s pitchers, that helped them a great deal.
Still, the experience of the 1890s pitchers shows that WWII can't be used to
explain all of this. And there is one other factor - the way in which MLB got the service
of minor leaguers. Here's a much simpler chart: a complete list of all pitchers who
did not have any win shares prior to their age 30 season yet went on to start 100 games along
with their actual year of birth:
1852 Ed Cushman 64 WS
1886 Frank Miller 56 WS
1893 Ray Kremer 141 WS
1895 Bob Smith 135 WS
1896 Heine Meine 54 WS
1903 Curt Davis 165 WS
1903 Johnny Niggeling 78 WS
1903 Jim Turner 83 WS
1907 Rip Sewell 139 WS
1908 Bob Klinger 64 WS
1911 Roger Wolff 58 WS
1912 Mickey Haefner 88 WS
1914 Ellis Kinder 145 WS
1922 Connie Johnson 48 WS
1965 Masato Yoshii 36 WS
1965 Orlando Hernandez 62 WS
11 of the 16 pitchers were born within 21 years of each other. That's a
curious bunching. Some are there because of WWII - Niggeling and Wolff are such
pitchers. Most aren't, though. Curt Davis gained a little bit from WWII, but he'd
have 100 GS Hitler or no Hitler. Ditto Rip Sewell. And the first few guys were done by
the time the US entered the war. Something was up, and it wasn't necessarily the war.
Making the bunch-up even more interesting is the almost complete lack of
such pitchers since then. Of the three post-Kinder'rs, one was a major league pitcher in
Japan, one was a Cuban defector, and Connie Johnson was a black pitcher. Given that only 6 teams had integrated by Labor
Day, 1953, I don't see his status as comparable to the turn-of-the-century gang.
What happened then? Let's look at the best pitcher in the bunch, Curt
Davis. Prior to
joining the Philllies, he spent six years pitching for the San Francisco
Seals in the PCL, at
which time that league was as good a minor league as the 20th century has
ever had.
Though he was not a standout right away, he did have a breakthrough season a
few years
before coming to the Phillies. Simply put, the turn-of-the-century guys
were late bloomers
who a generation earlier would've been overlooked entirely, and a generation
later once
the Branch Rickey minor league system had taken over, these men would've been
spotted
earlier and given their starts.
This I can try to adjust for - call it the Curt Davis Adjustment. Here's
how the 1890s,
1900s, 1910s, 1920s, and 1960s look if you throw out all the pitchers with
no win shares
before their age 30 season:
1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1960s
19 5 0.3 3 4 2
20 15 1 7 6 7
21 27 14 13 21 14
22 41 26 20 23 33
23 50 33 33 39 57
24 72 51 56 60 73
25 93 68 85 71 100
26 94 88 100 87 97
27 95 93 75 100 90
28 97 100 94 98 96
29 100 94 92 90 97
30 95 88 90 87 88
31 83 86 75 81 82
32 63 74 62 65 71
33 66 62 67 59 57
34 54 50 53 50 50
35 39 41 42 41 45
36 26 33 31 30 35 37*
37 21 21 24 19 23 29*
38 13 23 17 13 18 25*
39 12 14 10 9 8 13*
40 7 6 4 6 7 14*
First, the number directly in the 1960s column is what unadjusted. What I
mean that 35 in
the age 36 line means that what the pitchers born from 1960-8 did that year
is 35% of
what the pitchers born from 1960-9 did in their peak season. The incredible
thing is that
the ‘60s are already ahead of everyone at age 36, and almost there at age 37
even though
they're only at 90% and 80% of their full roster in those years. The *'d
columns are
adjusted, and they're clocking everyone.
This is even more remarkable when you realize that there's still a WWII
adjustment to be
made to all but the 1890s. Though their lead is impressive, it can
be overstated.
Again, there's no real evidence that they age better until age 35. Also
since there's no
WWII adjustment for the 1890s guys, they make a good comparison for the
1960s.
Assuming that the guys born in the late 1960s age as badly as it looks like
they will, the
children of the ‘60s, though they will age the best, won't be all that far
in front of the men
from the Gay ‘90s.
Could this be taken further and adjusted for people who only had 5 Win
Shares before their
age 30 season? That's tricky because the worst pitchers in the study can
rack up a good
deal of innings in 5 win shares or less. (Heck, Kevin Jarvis only has 12
win shares total in
his career, but he's in the study). Maybe move the year back a bit to 27 or
28? I tried,
and it doesn't change the results above. The 1960s have actually had more
late bloomers
than any recent decade-group. If you don't believe me just ask Paul Abbott
or Mark
Gardner or Steve Sparks.
Can I find an explanation for why they aged so well back in the days of
populism, the
Pullman strike, and the “glory days” of lynching? Here's a list of the
1890s pitchers who
earned the most win shares from age 30 onward:
Dazzy Vance, Dolf Luque, Eppa
Rixey,
Charlie Root, Urban Shocker, Burleigh Grimes, Sad Sam Jones, Stan Coveleski,
Jesse
Haines, and Rube Walberg.
The leader is possibly baseball's greatest late
bloomer, and
three are spitballers. These pitchers did age better than their peers -
though frankly the
Grandfathered-In Gang didn't age that much better than most liveballers
(more on that
later). Still, they do help the 1890s guys as a whole and thus the 1960s
pitchers post-35
aging is that much better.
So much for that question - let's try a different one with the database: Are
peak seasons
changing. I'm a little leery of this breakdown. Normally I let Excel do
the math for me,
but I couldn't get it to sort horizontally, so I had to go through by hand
and figure peak
season. There's a greater chance for error here. Three groups: peak season
for everyone
born prior to 7/1/69; for all liveballers born before the 1960s, and then
the 1960s group.
Plus, off to the side a little chart saying what percentage of peak seasons
are occurring
when. Let's look at the results:
Age Total Live 1960s All Live
17 - 1 0 0 17-9 0.6 0.0
18 - 1 0 0 20-4 21.5 19.1
19 - 5 0 0 25-9 52.6 51.4
20 - 14 4 1 30-4 21.7 24.9
21 - 29 12 0 35+ 3.7 4.6
22 - 44 18 3
23 - 70 36 9
24 - 98 64 8 1960s
25 - 137 65 29 18-9 0.0
26 - 145 85 22 20-4 12.9
27 - 126 75 12 25-9 55.2
28 - 108 68 13 30-4 23.9
29 - 109 68 14 35+ 8.0
30 - 71 50 9
31 - 71 46 12
32 - 44 29 7
33 - 47 34 5
34 - 25 16 6
35 - 17 12 5
36 - 12 7 5
37 - 7 6 1
38 - 4 4 1
39 - 2 2 0
40 - 2 1 1
All - 1189 702 163
The only real news here is that current pitchers are far more likely to have
a peak season in
the latter half of their 30s. Also, no one is likely to break Kid
McGill's record for
the earliest peak ever.
Let's ask another question: Using the info available in the Neyer/James
Guide to Pitchers, how do fastballers age compared to other groups of pitchers? Since
liveballers age so
much differently than dead-heads or box'rs, let's just look at liveballers
born before the
60s to start with. The results (in parenthesis is the number of pitchers in
each group):
Fast Junk
Age (360) (232) Fast Junk
18 1 0.3 16-19 0.5 0.2
19 4 2 20-24 17.5 11.9
20 9 6 25-29 42.1 39.6
21 25 13 30-34 29.4 31.9
22 34 25 35-39 8.9 13.5
23 51 40 40+ 1.3 2.9
24 74 52
25 86 78 16-27 43.7 34.4
26 100 89 28-49 56.3 65.6
27 97 91
28 92 99
29 88 100
30 83 93
31 73 79
32 65 74
33 58 65
34 45 58
35 31 53
36 26 38
37 18 28
38 14 21
39 9 16
40 6 11
41 4 8
42 3 5
43 1 3
What the heck? This is perhaps the most remarkable breakdown
yet. Not only do fastballers peak and prime earlier, and junkballers age
better, but just look at how both columns go. In both cases, each group of pitchers get
better every year until their peak and then get worse every year after it. Fastballers are
ahead every year until age 27 and then are behind every year from that point on.
Let's break it down by four major pitching groups - fastball, curveball,
slider, and sinker. Does one group just warp things or what?
Fast Curve Sliders Sinker
Age (360) (109) (38) (34)
19 4 1 0
20 9 7 0.2 11
21 25 14 5 23
22 34 29 15 33
23 51 42 29 61
24 74 57 46 61
25 86 83 75 84
26 100 94 88 89
27 97 96 86 83
28 92 99 84 93
29 88 100 100 100
30 83 91 74 84
31 73 77 58 61
33 58 64 46 42
34 45 57 48 35
35 31 51 36 33
36 26 31 22 34
37 18 23 12 20
38 14 19 6 16
39 9 10 4 13
40 6 7 3 7
41 4 6 5 1
42 3 2 4 0
43 1 1 1 0
A few things - first off, all junkers peak at the same time. Neat.
Curveballers do seem to age the best, but there is a problem - especially with the slider group.
Their peak season is unusually peak-arific. There's no other season over 90. That sets off my
danger detector. There's a problem in looking at pitchers as I'm doing here - assigning a year's
Win Shares by peak. Though this system has the benefit of making the results easier to
quickly read and comprehend to the gentle reader at home, if the peak is excess, it
artificially deflates all other seasons. Normally this isn't an issue so I go with it, but with sliders
it's an issue.
Let's onto a different chart - % of overall value in
given eras.
Ages Fast Curve Slider Sinker
16-19 4.7 1.3 0.05 0
20-24 17.5 13.2 10.4 17.8
25-29 42.1 41.9 47.3 42.6
30-34 29.4 31.6 32.2 27.9
35-39 8.9 11.9 8.7 11.0
40+ 1.3 1.4 1.4 0.7
Curvers seemed to age better, but for a while at least sliders aged the
best. In general, these confirms that no single group distorts the picture. Fastballers can't
blame their poor comparison on knucklers or grandfathered-in spitballers, or just one group
of junkers. The best they can claim here is a slight lead over sinkers in the early 30s,
and a barely-there lead over sliders in their late 30s. Yippee.
That breakdown is so clear, you can pretty much assume that you will see
something
similar for the 1960s guys. Let's check anyway. And
since I got them,
let's look at the guy born from 1970-4 as well. Here it is:
1960s 1970-4
Fast Junk Fast Junk
Age (111) (33) (38) (11)
19 0.4 1 0 0
20 4 7 2 3
21 12 15 8 16
22 32 31 19 35
23 57 48 45 52
24 70 71 63 80
25 98 100 84 85
26 97 73 91 100
27 90 66 100 80
28 94 91 88 79
29 100 90 70 63
30 87 71 62 50
31 83 57
32 71 58 Ages Fast Junk
33 58 36 16-9 0 0
34 53 24 20-24 18.5 25.2
35 45 31 25-9 58.6 55.2
30+ 22.9 19.6
Fast Junk
16-9 0.04 0.1
20-4 15.2 18.8
25-9 41.8 45.7
30-4 30.8 26.9
35+ 12.2 8.5
So, just to confirm, the clearest and most consistent aging
pattern split that I've come across for liveball pitchers, just completely stopped, came to an
end, and totally reversed itself, oh, about 20 years ago or so. Sure, why not. Now junkers
get up to speed quicker, peak and primer earlier, and age worse. Makes perfect sense?
OK, maybe there's a simple solution. That liveballer cluster covers a lot
of years. Maybe it began as wildly pro-speedballers in way back in the days of Ruth and has
gradually shifted. OK, I like that theory. Let's check on the pitchers born in the
1950s and 1940s as separate groups. Maybe, hopefully, they'll show a similar pattern to the
1960s.
1950s 1940s
Ages Fast Junk Ages Fast Junk
16-9 0.1 0.2 16-9 0.8 0.5
20-4 20.6 17.5 20-4 21.6 18.7
25-9 45.3 44.4 25-9 43.8 38.8
30-4 26.7 27.5 30-4 23.9 25.8
35-9 6.7 9.0 35-9 7.8 12.1
40+ 0.6 1.4 40+ 2.1 4.1
Prime 24-8 25-9 Prime 24-8 25-9
Peak 26 25 Peak 26 29
Not what I wanted to see. It's the same pattern that persisted throughout the liveball era. Yes, junkers had an earlier
peak by one year in the 1950s, but look at all the other info. The early peak looks like a fluke. Whatever
happened to the 1960s/70s pitchers, it came out of nowhere.
Let's go backwards now. Maybe I can find some clues if I look at
deadballers and pitchers box guys. Here they are:
Deadballers pre 1893
Ages Fast Junk Ages Fast Junk
16-9 1.1 0.2 16-9 3.2 2.5
20-4 26.5 20.2 20-4 42.7 37.1
25-9 44.3 49.6 25-9 36.1 45.9
30-4 20.3 25.6 30-4 15.5 13.6
35-9 5.9 4.0 35+ 2.6 0.9
40+ 1.8 0.4 Prime 21-5 23-7
Prime 24-8 25-9 Peak 23 27
Peak 25 27
Well, this looks a little familiar. Fastballers do better early? Check.
Earlier prime?
Check. Earlier peak? Check. Do they do worse after age 30? Well, it gets
a little
confusing here, but the fastballers are doing worse in their early 30s in the
deadball era. So
in the first phase of decline they're still worse. As for the box'rs, what
you have to
remember is just how wildly early these guys as a whole peaked. Remember
they were
declining in their late 20s, and again in the first phase of their decline,
fastballers are doing
poorly.
So just to recap - from 1876 to the 1980s baseball went many changes - the
pitchers were
moved back twice, given a mound, lost the spitball and shineball, had
several eras of high-
scoring offense, and low-scoring deadness. It survived two world wars and
other, smaller
conflicts. It integrated, adopted night baseball, conquered the minor
leagues, went to
airline travel, coast-to-coast leagues, and paid grown men to put on silly
looking costumes
and serve as mascots. Yet throughout all this turmoil, one consistent held
true: fastballers
started earlier, got up to speed quicker, entered their prime earlier,
peaked earlier, and -
through at least the first stages of decline - performed considerably worse
than junkers.
Then came the 1980s. Now absolutely none of that is true. The exact
opposite is going
on. Sure. OK. Why not? What the hell.
Ideas? Explanations? I'm empty folks. Not a clue. I can throw a few
things out - the
1980s is associated with the rise of the split-fingered fastball. Does that
have something
to do with it? I dunno. Pitch counts? (shrugs). Maybe. You know what
though? None
of these really explains it because there are two separate things going on -
not only are
fastballers aging better, but everyone else is aging worse. How the heck
does the rise of
the splitter cause curveballers to pitch worse at age 34? It's the
damnedest thing.
So much for that one. Next question -- what happens when you compare how
righties and
southpaws age? First, let's look at liveballers born before 1960:
RIGHTYS VS. LEFTYS
R L R L
19 3 3 0.3% 0.3%
20 8 9 0.7% 0.8%
21 21 20 1.8% 1.9%
22 32 32 2.7% 3.0%
23 52 44 4.3% 4.1%
24 72 60 6.1% 5.6%
25 91 76 7.6% 7.1%
26 99.5 100 8.3% 9.4%
27 99.9 92 8.4% 8.6%
28 100 88 8.4% 8.3%
29 99 88 8.3% 8.2%
30 93 84 7.8% 7.8%
31 87 73 7.3% 6.8%
32 71 68 5.9% 6.4%
33 64 57 5.4% 5.3%
34 54 48 4.5% 4.5%
35 43 36 3.6% 3.4%
36 32 29 2.7% 2.8%
37 23 20 1.9% 1.9%
38 17 16 1.4% 1.5%
39 13 10 1.1% 0.9%
40 9 6 0.8% 0.6%
41 6 4 0.5% 0.4%
42 4 3 0.3% 0.3%
43 2 1 0.2% 0.1%
This is one instance where the peak seasons distort the comparison. The
lefties had one
big year with only one other season (barely) worth 90% of it. The righties
had their top
four seasons within 1% of their value. Maybe there's a reason why one group
has such a
cluster of peak seasons and the other doesn't, but I'm not assume that's the
case. As
mentioned earlier, at times the distribution of win shares within the prime
is a bit fluky.
That's why I have the second series of columns on the right. That's what
percentage of
the pitchers' total win shares were accumulated during that one season. The
lefties gained
a considerably greater percentage in their best season than the righties
ever did, and that
skews that data in the left columns. According to those columns, the
righties smoke the
lefties in terms of aging. Looking at the columns on the right, it's quite
a bit closer.
Looking at it another way:
Liveballers
Ages R L
16-19 0.3% 0.3%
20-24 15.5% 15.5%
25-29 41.0% 41.5%
30-34 30.9% 31.1%
35-39 10.7% 10.4%
40+ 2.1% 1.5%
16-27 40.2% 40.8%
28-49 59.8% 59.2%
A very modest, and probably insignificant lead for righties. They have less
an advantage
of less than 1%.
Has this always been true? Let's look at deadballers, and then pitchers box
guys:
Lefties - Deadball
R L
19 6 3
20 15 21
21 26 25
22 45 55
23 58 73
24 79 89
25 97 87
26 97 99
27 100 100
28 99 87
29 87 72
30 73 58
31 60 38
32 48 27
33 37 19
34 25 17
35 17 12
36 12 9
37 9 4
38 7 2
39 3 5
40 4 3
41 3 1
42 2 0
43 1 0
Deadballers
Ages R L
16-19 0.8% 0.3%
20-24 22.1% 29.0%
25-29 47.5% 49.0%
30-34 24.0% 17.6%
35-39 4.7% 3.5%
40+ 0.6% 1.5%
16-27 51.9% 60.9%
28-49 48.1% 39.1%
Box R L
16-29 85.0% 92.2%
30+ 15.0% 7.8
Well that's interesting. Clearly before the liveball era lefties aged
worse, and not just bit a
little bit worse. They began falling apart as soon as they passed their
peak and generally
aged a year or two worse than righties. And this was true for the entire
half-century of
ball back then.
So if that's the case, are modern lefties and righties aging the same or has
the balance
slowing been tipping toward lefties? Let's look at the 1960s and 1950s
pitchers:
1960s
Age R L
16-9 0.2 0.1
20-4 16.4 14.8
25-9 42.4 39.0
30-4 31.0 28.6
35+ 9.9 17.5
Peak 25 26
Prime 25-9 26-30
1950s
Age R L
16-9 0.1 0.3
20-4 19.9 22.4
25-9 44.0 45.1
30-4 26.6 25.9
35-9 8.3 6.0
40+ 1.1 0.3
Peak 26 26
Prime 25-9 25-9
1940s
Age R L
16-19 0.8 0.3
20-24 22.3 17.8
25-29 43.2 38.2
30-34 22.3 30.7
35-39 8.5 10.8
40+ 2.8 2.3
Some conflicting data here. The 1960s lefties are smoking the righties,
especially in old
age. Take a bow Jaime Moyer, Chuck Finley, David Wells and Randy Johnson. A
similar
trend occurs in the 1940s bunch. Though righties did better after turning
40, they were
torched in the previous ten years. Meanwhile there's the 1950s, where there
is little
difference at all, but a minimal edge to righties during the decline years.
What to make of this? Lacking the desire to sort through every decade of
pitchers, here's
my theory: throughout the deadball era righties (obviously) aged better, but
this trend
slowly reversed itself. At first, righties likely had a small edge.
Actually, given the above
charts on pitchers since 1940 and combining it with the overall liveball
info, righties must
have aged better in the initial decades of the liveball era. For whatever
reason - I'll try to
take some guesses later - this has flipped over. So why were the 1950s
backwards? They
don't fit the trend. I have no idea, but keep in mind the sample size for
one decade isn't as
large - especially if you're only looking at lefties born each decade.
Maybe it just a dry
spell for lefthanded pitchers. It could be as simple as that?
OK, so why have lefties improved their aging patterns? One theory came to
me as I
looked at the 1960s lefties: call it the Terry Mulholland Theory. As anyone
who has seen
baseball in recent years can attest, teams often like having a lefty in the
‘pen. Some, like
Jesse Orosco, can seemingly pitch forever as a LOOGY if they can exhibit
some minimal
control.
That's a theory, but I don't buy it. Sure LOOGYs are prolific, but there
ain't many that
are this study. Captain LOOGY himself, Orosco, fell 96 starts shy of making
it. There are
some starters-turned-relievers in the study - Mulholland, Rheal Cormier,
Chris Hammond,
Jeff Fassero, and Kent Mercker are the big ones from the 1960s - but not
many. The
previously mentioned guys are about it for that decade. And their
contributions pale in
comparison to Glavine, Johnson, Wells, Moyer, & Rogers. Besides, their
contributions
are largely matched by that of righty converted starters like John Smoltz,
Flash Gordon,
and Cal Eldred. Lefties do have some advantage there, but not enough to
explain the bid
difference in the 1960s group.
So what is it? Damned if I know. That's my own good theory. I wish I had
a brilliant
answer right about now, but I don't. Ah well - let's ask another question:
What about
knucklers? Do they age the same? They have a reputation as late bloomers.
Let's check
it out - comparing pitchers listed as primarily knucklers in the Neyer/James
Guide to my
main sample of liveballers:
KNUCKLE LIVE
20 0 8
21 3 21
22 15 32
23 35 50
24 56 69
25 76 86
26 72 100
27 49 98
28 80 97
29 89 96
30 100 79
31 92 70
32 99 57
33 77 48
34 88 39
35 75 31
36 67 23
37 51 16
38 42 12
39 42 8
40 31 6
41 18 4
42 15 2
43 13 1
44 7 1
Knucklers have the latest prime (ages 28-32) of any group that I've isolated
almost without exception. Pitchers who got their first real chance at age 29 or
later had a later
prime, but that's in. Pitchers who got started at age 28 had the prime
(I'll discuss this
stuff more later on), and that's a group which by definition should have had
a late start.
Nothing terribly surprising, but it's nice to have the data.
Well, that's knucklers, what about spitballers? There's another group that
should age
better. This is a bit more confusing, because most were deadballers, but
there are also some
grandfathered-in guys. Since live and deadball eras had such different
aging patterns I'll
compare grandfathered guys (referred to people as “Last”) to liveballers,
and deadball
spitters (D.Spit below) to other deadballers. Making it even more confusing
is Jack
Quinn, who pitched most of his career in the liveball era, but pitched more
innings in the
deadball era than most of the deadballers in this study. I'm actually going
to include him
in both groups for now. Here are the results:
Age Last Live D.Spit Oth.Dead
20 0 8 0 19
21 8 21 11 28
22 20 32 22 51 Ages D-Spit noQuinn
23 37 50 39 65 16-9 0% 0
24 47 69 49 85 20-4 14.3 15.4
25 73 86 71 97 25-9 49.2 52.2
26 92 100 77 100 30-4 27.6 28.5
27 100 98 100 98 35-9 5.6 3.6
28 72 97 85 95 40+ 3.3 0.3
29 78 96 81 82
30 81 79 73 68 Dead - Others
31 71 70 68 51 16-9 0.8%
32 67 57 45 42 20-4 24.9
33 48 48 23 34 25-9 47.2
34 37 39 23 22 30-4 21.7
35 42 32 22 15 35-9 4.5
36 39 23 15 11 40+ 0.9
37 21 17 5 9
38 16 12 4 6 Last Live
39 17 8 4 4 30-4 26.0 31.0
40 17 6 6 4 35+ 22.0 12.3
41 9 4 2 3
42 10 2 3 2
43 9 1 4 0.7
44 10 1 4 0.2
Several things - first, no one quite matches the record of knucklers. These
guys did age
better, but not that much better. Second, please note that the deadball
spitters have an
unusually large peak season which artificially depresses all their numbers.
If you look at
the main chart isn't entirely clear that they aged better than other
deadballers. But look at
the smaller charts on the right. Deadball spitters had 36.5% of their
overall value after the
age of 30. Other deadballers weigh in at 27.1%. Considerable advantage to
the
unsanitary stylists. Even if you toss Quinn out it doesn't change that much
as his impact is
almost entirely limited to age 40 and beyond (though his impact is immense
from that
point onward). The grandfathered guys had a much more modest advantage -
48% of
their career value after turning 30 instead of 42.3%. This advantage
doesn't really appear
until after age 35.
This helps solve the riddle of 1890s pitchers. This was the gang that aged
so well in their
late 30s despite having no WWII impact. Well, this spitter split does prove
that the
grandfathered guys born in the McKinley era did boost the overall aging
patterns.
Well, spitters age better. No big surprise there, but again, it's always
nice to have the
data. Any thing else worth checking? Well, how about walk rates and
strikeout rates?
Do pitchers with better K-rates age better? Do pitchers with better control
age better?
And how do flamethrowers compare to control masters in terms of aging?
Fortunately, due to the thankless yeomen work of Dr. Memory, this is pretty
easy to
answer. He, for whatever masochistic reasons of his own, went through the
statistical
record and adjusted the K-rates, W-rates, and K/W ratios for every pitcher
in this study
for their leagues' rates With these league-normalized numbers, it's easy to
compare
pitchers across eras.
Again, let's look at the main sampling of liveballers born before 1960 and
see what
happens. For this, I've divided up all pitchers into 10 groups - from the
best strikeout
pitchers, to the worst strikeout pitchers, and the same with adjusted BB
rate. Let's look
at the results, starting with K-rates. The info at the end is average
career Win Shares per
pitcher in the group, and at the very end the Dr. Memory K #s of the
pitchers in each
group:
Adj. K-rate
Grp 16-9 20-4 25-9 30-4 35-9 40+ Peak Prime Avg K#
A 0.7 15.2 38.5 29.5 13.5 2.7 27 26-30 160.8 124+
B 0.3 20.0 40.4 27.7 10.4 0.9 26 25-29 120.7 113-23
C 0.4 20.1 41.0 29.6 7.9 1.0 29 25-29 128.1 107-12
D 0.5 15.3 39.8 31.4 9.9 2.9 29 26-30 120.0 101-06
E 0.3 15.5 42.9 29.7 9.6 2.0 26 26-30 120.5 95-100
F 0.4 13.9 41.1 30.0 11.2 3.4 27 26-30 103.8 90-94
G 0.4 21.9 42.1 27.9 6.6 1.1 25 25-29 99.1 86-9
H 0.4 11.3 44.2 34.8 9.1 0.6 29 26-30 91.5 80-5
I 0 12.5 39.7 31.6 14.0 2.2 26 26-30 104.3 73-9
J 0.1 17.0 46.5 28.2 8.1 0.2 28 25-29 83.5 72-
First off, it does appear that being a great strikeout pitcher comes in
handy when aging,
but not nearly as handy as I would have guessed. Group A had 45.7% of their
value after
age 30, which is definitely above-average as half the groups had less than
42% of their
value from that point onward. They are not, surprisingly, the best aging
group. That
honor goes to, shockingly, the Group I, who has 47.8% of their value after
age 30. The
runner up group is far closer to the fifth best aging group than to them.
This I find very surprising because in the New Historical Abstract Bill
James shows that
the best indicator of future value for a young pitcher is his K-rate. He
mentions that the
last young right-handed pitcher with a consistently poor K-rate who ended up
having a
good career was Lew Burdette almost a half-century ago. So why the
difference here?
Simple - we're looking at career K-rates, not just those of young'uns.
Almost everyone
has their K-rate go down as they get older, and so career K-rates really
aren't a great
measure of a pitcher's ability to age well. In fact, though Group A has the
2nd best aging
pattern, groups B and C have some of the worst aging patterns. Both of
those groups
used up over 60% of their value by the time they reached 30 years of age.
There is still some evidence here to bolster the importance of K-rates Group
J, for
example, has one of the worst aging patterns. They're the worst after age
40, and 2nd
worst to K-rate group G after age 30. The results are decidedly mixed,
though.
How about walk rates?
Adj BB-rate
Grp 16-9 20-4 25-9 30-4 35-9 40+ Peak Prime Avg BB#
A 0.1 13.4 39.1 31.9 12.8 2.7 30 26-30 144.7 144+
B 0.7 14.2 38.4 31.1 13.0 2.6 28 26-30 148.0 130-43
C 0.05 17.6 36.3 29.9 13.8 2.2 26 25-29 137.0 121-9
D 0.8 11.6 43.4 34.1 8.7 1.4 29 26-30 120.0 115-20
E 0.1 12.0 36.5 34.7 13.9 2.8 30 26-30 121.1 108-14
F 0.2 14.4 39.9 31.0 12.3 2.3 29 26-30 105.6 103-7
G 0.2 15.4 43.2 31.9 8.7 0.5 27 26-30 113.8 98-102
H 1.0 19.7 50.5 24.2 4.1 0.5 26 25-29 86.1 92-7
I 0.2 20.5 42.9 28.1 7.1 1.2 26 25-29 84.8 82-91
J 0.05 23.5 50.5 20.1 4.0 2.0 27 25-29 67.5 81-
The first thing I notice is how much better the BB#s are in comparison to
the K#s. They
don't fall below 100 until group G here, while they fell below with Group E
up above.
These pitchers on the whole had better control than strikeouts.
Interesting.
What's even more important here is that career W rate seems to have a
clearer impact on
aging patterns than K-rates do. Group A has the 2nd best aging pattern
(which I'm
arbitrarily defining as what percentage of their overall value did they get
after age 30). So
far that's just like the K-rates, but here Group B has the 3rd best aging
pattern. Group C
has the 4th best aging pattern. The groups with 6 best BB numbers have the
6 best aging
patterns. The three worst aging patterns were (by far) the three bottom
groups. There's
also a broader range. In the K rates, the group with the greatest overall
value after age 30
was at 45.7%. Here, four groups best that mark and a fifth comes in at
45.6%. The
lowest amount of post-30 value with the K-rates was 35.6%. Here, there are
two groups
(H and J) under 30%.
The best aging group here, if you're wondering, is Group E at 51.4%. I have
no idea why
they lead, but there it is. Group J came in dead last, with barely a
quarter of their value
coming after turning 30.
One other thing comes out in this: ages 26-9 clearly are the main prime
years for
liveballers. Despite the fact there is such a notable difference in aging
patterns, the prime
years are almost the same for all. Some begin their prime a year earlier
than others, that's
the only difference.
Whadaya say we compare K-rates to W-rates? I've got the chart figured out,
but really, it
doesn't add anything. It'll just repeat what I just said. Instead, let's
move on to the last
of the Dr. Memory info: what impact does a K/W ratio have on a pitcher's
aging pattern?
Adj K/BB-ratio
Grp 16-9 20-4 25-9 30-4 35-9 40+ Peak Prime Avg K/BB#
A 0.8 13.8 35.9 31.3 14.8 3.4 30 26-30 188.8 139+
B 0.1 12.2 36.7 33.4 14.2 3.5 26 25-29 151.4 125-38
C 0.7 19.0 40.4 29.9 8.9 1.1 29 26-30 139.9 115-24
D 0.2 1.8 42.0 30.8 12.3 2.9 26 26-30 132.3 107-14
E 0.1 18.1 41.5 30.8 8.3 1.1 29 25-29 104.9 101-6
F 0.3 14.2 42.9 32.1 9.6 0.9 28 26-30 100.7 95-100
G 0.4 16.9 46.6 28.8 7.2 0.2 26 25-29 94.3 91-4
H 0.1 17.4 43.5 30.5 7.0 1.5 26 25-29 93.0 84-90
I 0 19.9 43.7 25.7 9.6 1.0 26 24-28 69.5 77-83
J 0.1 19.5 51.1 25.2 4.2 0 26 25-29 53.8 76-
From the Dept. of Not At All Surprising Info: better pitchers tend to have
better K/BB
ratios. It's perfect the way it works out -- the best K/BB group has best
average win
shares, group B in second and so on down the line to group J with the worst
average. The
most interesting thing to me is that the better the group of pitchers, the
later the prime.
It's not perfect as Group B had an earlier prime than C, D, and F while
averaging more
win shares per pitcher, but that's the only major exception. Pitchers with
a lousy ratio,
when they start declining and losing a little of what they had, aren't long
for this game.
Guys in Group J get barely more of their value after age 35 than Groups A
and B get at
after age 40.
Another question: what about when guys first make their mark in the
baseball? Do guys
who come to the bigs at an early age have the same aging pattern as guys who
come in
later? For this study, I'm not looking at how old a pitcher was when he
first arrived in
MLB but how old he was when he first earned 3 win shares in a season.
There's just too
many guys who came up for a cup of coffee and then didn't come back for
another year or
three. This has been an old story from Joe Nuxhall to Mike Morgan. By
making it three
win shares instead I'm looking at how old they were when they first got
themselves
somewhat established. The first group is 19 or younger (19-) and the last
group is 29+;
every other group is just one age. Here's the results (again looking at
liveballers born
before 7/1/59):
First Year with 3 Win Shares
Age 19- 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29+
18 9 1 0.4 0.1 0.2 0 0 0 0 0 0
19 56 2 0.3 0.1 0 0 0 0 0 0.4 0
20 66 57 4 0.4 0.5 0.2 0 0 0 0 0
21 78 77 76 3 1 0.5 0.2 0.3 0.3 0 0.3
22 84 74 72 73 4 1 0.2 1 0 0.4 0
23 80 72 88 88 67 4 1 0.4 0 1 0
24 88 94 98 100 79 87 4 2 0 0.4 1
25 82 100 99 99 91 96 82 3 2 1 1
26 87 76 100 94 100 100 100 92 2 1 0.3
27 100 82 91 82 85 91 96 99 76 7 4
28 89 71 77 80 82 85 86 99 90 100 1
29 73 73 64 75 83 86 91 100 100 89 43
30 66 64 54 67 66 88 90 98 99 97 68
31 47 46 49 56 54 76 75 91 99.7 97 82
32 37 52 44 52 52 61 67 72 94 74 86
33 28 43 38 44 44 53 64 56 87 76 100
34 29 34 34 35 38 40 45 49 82 73 94
35 20 22 26 27 28 40 38 36 40 57 78
36 18 15 20 18 24 22 31 31 40 52 60
37 7 13 15 13 14 12 26 17 30 40 49
38 8 6 12 7 12 5 18 15 20 32 48
39 1 3 9 8 6 1 18 11 11 19 36
Comments time: The 19- pitchers averaged more win shares than any other
group, which
makes sense. The best players should be the first to make it to the majors.
However,
looking at it here, they aged the worst from age 32-onward of any group
here. That's
interesting. This doesn't surprise me much. One of the favorite lists I
ever cooked up was
a list of liveballers who won 150 games before they turned 30. Only one -
Greg Maddux -
made it to 300. The others either: 1) had their arms fall off in their
early 30s (Drysdale,
Ferrell, Newhouser, Hunter, Holtzman), or 2) survived, but weren't nearly as
good as they
had been when they were young (Feller, Harder, Blue, Gooden). They had 52
20-win
seasons before age 30, but only 4 afterwards, and 3 of those were Jim
Palmer. The point:
pitchers that were worked the hardest when they were youngest don't hold up
the best
when they age. That's exactly what happened here.
Another interesting result is that the peak often occurs at the same dang
time. One
question I had going in was would pitchers that came up later have the same
aging curve
as others, just begun later? In other words, would it take most of these
groups the
amount of time to reach their peak and prime? I don't see that happening in
these results.
Those that first established themselves from ages 20-25 peaked at about the
same time -
age 25 or 26. Only the age 22 pitchers missed out on that. Five of the
first six groups all
had their prime at either ages 23-7 or 24-8 (age 23 had their prime from
25-9). There are,
obviously some differences, as guys who came up at age 28 peaked later than
guys who
came up at age 20, but whereas the early arrivals had a couple years to work
up to their
peak, the later arrivals often began in their peak. Ages 24-8 all began
their prime either
their first big year or the year after while only one of the earlier groups
could say that.
It's also interesting to compare the latter groups to knuckleball pitchers.
Knucklers aged
better than just about all of them. Comparing their aging patterns to
Groups 19- to 28
(I'll look at the 29+rs separately in a second) knucklers score the best at
every age after
turning 30 except age 31, where they finish third, and age 33, where they
come in second.
Every other year they best every last one of those groups. That's
impressive. Comparing
them to the 29+ group, they don't do quite as well, but they still do age
better. Here's
comparing those two groups from age 30-9:
Age Knuck 29+
30 100 68
31 92 82
32 99 86
33 77 100
34 88 94
35 75 78
36 67 60
37 51 49
38 42 48
39 42 36
The 29+rs had the lead in the heart of their prime (33-35) and a narrow lead
at age 38, but
that's it. If anyone should age really good, it's guys who had accomplished
nothing in
MLB by age 29 yet still managed to start games. Yet knucklers aged a little
better. This
is despite the fact that there are several knucklers in the age 29+ group,
including at least
3 pitchers who had no career win shares before their age 30 season.
One last bit I want to check. I've ignored everyone born after 6/30/69 here
so far, and
there are numerous guys from the first half of the 1970's who have 100
starts and have
finished what should be their prime. Let's see how their aging. For
comparison I'll line
up their numbers against 1960s pitchers.
1970-4 Pitchers (58 pitchers)
Age 70-4 60s
19 0 2
20 2 7
21 12 14
22 24 33
23 51 57
24 67 73
25 86 100
26 93 97
27 100 90
28 97 96
29 84 97
30 71 88
I need to note that there are pitchers out there born from 1970-4 who
haven't yet started
100 games but will end up doing so before their done, so those numbers
aren't in stone.
Obviously, the second half of the decade still has to go through the prime.
As it stands,
they're on track for the oldest peak season for any decade group since the
1920s, and the
worst age 30 season of the liveball era. Again, this should change as some
late bloomers
emerge.
Chris Jaffe
Posted: September 02, 2005 at 09:11 AM |
11 comment(s)
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This is very interesting and obviously reflects a lot of work. What implications do you see for teams today?
1) Draft young fastballers and let them go via FA?
2) Draft HS fastballers in the mid rounds?
3) Sign old junkballers as FA?
4) Trade productive young starters at age 27?
Which teams do you think most profit from these implications? How do you think these conclusions translate to the minor leagues or to relief pitchers?
Chris,
A few minor points. (Too much material to read in one sitting)
Your “aging” patterns is not really an aging pattern. I would guess that you would have gotten similar results if you simply used IP. What your data is telling you is how many pitchers at each age class are pitching. When you have things like expansion, it’s easy to see that this opens up the door for the older guys to stay in the game. To do a true aging pattern, you need to have the same pitchers at the same weights in two or more age classes (which by itself will bring selective sampling issues).
Technical notes: to sort in Excel by row, click data/sort, and select “options”. Toggle your orientation as you need it. Your other choice is to cut/PasteSpecial, and select “transpose”. This turns rows into cols and cols into rows.
Did you actually go through each pitcher in the (excellent) James/Neyer guide manually, and noted his pitch type style? This is one of those times that I wished the book came with a CD. I’d love to get that file from you, if you can.
Tom
Looks great. I’m going to have to print it out to read, but I can’t print. Are Primer articles set up so that they won’t configure to a printer somehow? Just call me clueless…
Never mind. Apparently I had a problem with Mozilla—it prints from Explorer.
Hey Chris,
This is phenomenal, one of the best articles I’ve read on this site, if not the best.
Thank you,
Derrick
Sorry about some of the columns being off.
Technical notes: to sort in Excel by row, click data/sort, and select “options”. Toggle your orientation as you need it. Your other choice is to cut/PasteSpecial, and select “transpose”. This turns rows into cols and cols into rows.
I’ll check that out.
Did you actually go through each pitcher in the (excellent) James/Neyer guide manually, and noted his pitch type style?
When possible, yea. Some weren’t listed, some had no clear #1 pitch.
This is one of those times that I wished the book came with a CD. I’d love to get that file from you, if you can.
Check your e-mail. If anyone else wants the database, just e-mail me and I’ll send it to you when I get the chance (note: may not be done right away).
What implications do you see for teams today?
Well, that’s a trickier one. Any implications taken from this would have a giant qualifier on it - just because it’s some sort of trend doesn’t mean its true for all pitchers.
Derrick - thanks for your kind words.
A few notes . . . some of the conclusions differ from what I said in Toronto. There, I was struck by how close the 1890s and 1960s were - in part because I never looked at spitters. In whipping this article up it seemed clearer that 1960s-born pitchers are retaining more value later.
Really, in some ways the real story are the 1930s/40s/50s/ guys. They’re the great step backwards. Deadballers age better than box’rs. Early live ballers age better than deadballers. Current age better than early liveballers, but the mid-live ballers were the only major step backwards.
Also, the bit at the end in comparing knucklers to late arrvials comes from a talk I had with Dial. He wondered how much of knucklers aging was simply due to their getting a later start than most.
Haven’t read the whole thing yet. And sorry if I missed you addressing this point.
Generally you’re measuring aging patterns as % of peak. This would seem to guarantee that pitchers who pitch during a transition in starter usage will “age poorly”. For example, the young guys starting in the 60s/70s (roughly 1945-1955 birthdates) were making 35-38 starts a year, then baseball transitioned to the 4.5-5 man rotation and these guys were making 31-34 starts a year later in their careers (of those who had late careers). Four fewer starts a year means a lot fewer win shares.
To take one example, Rick Reuschel (born May 1949) made 37-38 starts almost every year through age 31. In 74, he made 38 (and 3 relief appearances god love him) which was only 6th in the league. Late in his career, he was making 32 to 36 starts a year, but he tied for the league lead with those 36. Reuschel, one of the best-aging pitchers of his generation, did as much in his late career as most of today’s best old pitchers (158, 131, and 116 ERA+s at ages 36, 38, and 40 and always 200+ IP). But he, and every other starter in baseball, was making 10% fewer starts and pitching about 15% fewer innings than he did in his prime. He aged better than Tom Glavine, probably Maddux, and maybe even nearly as well as Clemens (given Reuschel’s lower talent level to begin with), but he may look worse compared to peak just because pitcher usage changed.
Put most simply, in raw win shares, pitchers of earlier eras had much higher peaks than today’s. They could have posted the same number of late-career win shares in the same number of starts as today’s pitchers, but measured against their own higher peak, they would appear to be much worse. That wouldn’t appear to be enough to explain the whole difference, but some.
Not sure there’s an easy solution. You could look at raw win shares. Or you could try to normalize in some way—maybe looking at % of win shares to % of innings pitched at each age.
I think Tango’s comment brushes up against this too. It’s not clear to me whether you’re getting at different aging patterns or changes in pitcher usage.
For example, the young guys starting in the 60s/70s (roughly 1945-1955 birthdates) were making 35-38 starts a year, then baseball transitioned to the 4.5-5 man rotation and these guys were making 31-34 starts a year later in their careers (of those who had late careers). Four fewer starts a year means a lot fewer win shares.
Yea, but those guys were part of a 30 year swath where pitchers kept aging like that. I don’t think there was a continual 30 year revolution in pitcher usage.
Your larger point stands that changes in usage would influence this.
Uh, some (many?) current pitchers have the benefit of performance enhancement drugs. Just as the likes of Bonds shattered 100 years of aging statistical data, we see similar, goofy aging trends for contemporary pitchers. The answer swirls in the juice.
The answer swirls in the juice.
First, Catfish, you have to know if you even have a question the juice can answer.
Then came the 1980s. Now absolutely none of that is true. The exact opposite is going on. Sure. OK. Why not? What the hell.
I think that you switched from birth decade to pitching decade somewhere around this quote, but I couldn’t tell when. Did the effect start happening in the 1980s or did it start affecting pitchers born in the 1980s?
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