Here’s what I did: According to Baseball Reference, there have been 1,084 seasons among hitters of 6.0 Wins Above Replacement or better (since 1901). These are most of baseball’s best years for hitters, and they range from Babe Ruth’s absurd 1923 season (.393/.545/.764, 41 homers, 131 RBIs, 151 runs, 170 walks) to Adrian Gonzalez’s 2010 season (.298/.393/.511 with 31 homers, 101 RBIs, 87 runs, playing in that hitter’s graveyard in San Diego).
These are not ALL the fabulous seasons in baseball history by any means … but they are most of them. It doesn’t really matter for this particular post if you like WAR or hate it — all that matters here is that a 6.0 WAR season usually makes the player an MVP candidate. Last year’s hitting candidates in the American League were Jacoby Ellsbury (7.5), Jose Bautista (8.5), Curtis Granderson (5.2) and Miggy Cabrera (7.1). In the National League, they were Ryan Braun (7.7), Matt Kemp (10.0), Prince Fielder (5.2), Justin Upton (4.1) and Albert Pujols (5.4).
So, 6.0 seemed like a pretty good cutoff point.
Then I looked to see at WHAT AGE those players had their good seasons. That’s what gives us the chart above. I was not nimble enough to make the chart as readable as I would like, but I think you get the picture. As you can see, there are only a few players who had such a great season at age 20 or 21. And there were very few players who had such a great season at age 39 or 40. The bulk of them were in their mid-to-late 20s.
I’ll go through the ages year-by-year, because I think it’s kind of interesting … though I admit that probably says more about me than it does about the information.
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1. villageidiom Posted: February 10, 2012 at 10:45 PM (#4058576)It's an interesting way to look at aging, and it's somewhat relevant to the question of whether you can expect MVP-caliber seasons out of older players. But that's about as far as I'd go with it.
Age Number20 36
21 109
22 217
23 379
24 514
25 650
26 723
27 699
28 658
29 599
30 503
31 413
32 348
33 255
34 185
35 130
36 90
37 65
38 41
39 24
40 14
EDIT: Not perfect because we're talking different time frames, and players drop out every now and then due to injury and then pop back in, but still likely a decent indicator of the age distribution.
One of the amazing things about Microsoft Excel is that, in 2012, afaict, I still can't copy that column of numbers, and paste it, and have the program recognize that it should be separated into two columns. Without, hopefully, knowing some secret trick.
Is there a way to do this, without saving to a text file, and then importing?
It's useful to know the number players of each age, but unless were assuming that the people running teams are completely incompetent (ie: no better than random chance) in identifying MPV-right-now talents in their farms systems, we should probably also be looking at the total number of professional players (minors and majors) rather than just major leaguers. Otherwise we'd be vastly understating the rarity of extremely young players having that type of season.
I don't think that knowing the ages of all players in professional baseball is important at all.
This whole Penn State thing has to have been a huge kick in the balls for Poz. One second, you think you have a chance to write a bestseller, a father's day gist staple, about an iconic, respected figure. A chance to get into the Mitch Albom shlock zone, and then this happens.
Of those pitchers, Abbott had by far the most successful major league career--but the successful part didn't start until several years later.
He wasn't any good, but he was less bad than I'd expected. Which is something, I guess.
If only Paterno had said that much to Sandusky...
... Sorry, had to. I'm actually with you on this one. I find it a bit hard to believe that a site that, generally, thinks you can separate talent from character (Hall of Merit?) is incapable of doing so with Poz. I frankly have no idea of what kind of person Poz is, and I could care less. He's an excellent baseball writer and this was a fun piece to read. Speaking of which...
This generally cuts against something I had long assumed, which was that the age-27 peak was less applicable to MVP caliber talents. Granted, this isn't the perfect study for it (scaling oWAR by age for players with >60 oWAR might be better for these purposes.) Still, a fun diversion.
Of the 1,084 players with WAR of 6+, only 8 did it in 500 PA or fewer in non-strike seasons (18 total), per BB-REF PI. I decided to use "Qualified for batting title (3.1 PA per game)" as my proxy for "played everyday."
Age 27 is the peak age for share of regular players. The share of 6+ WAR players among regulars seems to drop from age 20 to a fairly stable and flat between 21 and 32.
Over the period 1901-2011, the peak age for share of regular players in any given year varies mostly between 25-30. From looking at the data, the pattern seems to be that a given age class or generation (eg all regular players whose age-20 season would have been in 1964, 21 in 1965, 22 in 1966 etc.) tends to be the peak of the population for 3-6 years, until another, younger age class takes over. It seems like a series of mini population booms among the annual generations of regular players. Not surprisingly, those classes are the ones with above-normal shares of regulars among older players, which occur in periodic waves. The biggest change over time is the "disappearance" of young regulars, ie 20-23, in the last 20-30 years.
It seems like it's been several hundred years since the World Series ended.
no thread on this site should ever be derailed because some ####### idiot wants to pretend that sandusky is ####### baseball news.... Pos is BY FAR the best baseball writer on the planet, and to waste any space on some off hand comment about a guy(paterno) who isn't really a major part of the story, is to focus on the morons. You are by literal definition, a moron if you bag on Pos because of his defense of Paterno.
anyway, good article, let's keep the ####### idiots out of this thread..
I don't think Hall of Merit voters are at all typical of readers of this site, for good or ill.
Of the 557 pitcher-seasons with WAR of 6+, only 4 did it in fewer than 1 IP per team game, per BB-REF PI. I decided to use "Qualified for league ERA title" as my proxy for "played everyday."
Age 26-27 is the peak age for share of regular pitchers. The share of 6+ WAR pitchers among regulars at each age seems to drop from age 19 to 24, then rises to a peak at about age 35 and then falls off through age 42. This is a different shaped curve than that for hitters, and maybe this implies different aging behavior for pitchers versus hitters (and of star pitchers versus other everyday pitchers).
Age #Qual % 6+W % 19 14 0.2% 1 7.1% 20 57 0.7% 4 7.0% 21 148 1.8% 8 5.4% 22 267 3.3% 19 7.1% 23 441 5.4% 28 6.3% 24 611 7.5% 33 5.4% 25 757 9.2% 46 6.1% 26 798 9.7% 51 6.4% 27 804 9.8% 54 6.7% 28 767 9.4% 54 7.0% 29 667 8.1% 44 6.6% 30 598 7.3% 46 7.7% 31 531 6.5% 42 7.9% 32 424 5.2% 28 6.6% 33 350 4.3% 26 7.4% 34 281 3.4% 19 6.8% 35 218 2.7% 20 9.2% 36 147 1.8% 12 8.2% 37 102 1.2% 8 7.8% 38 76 0.9% 5 6.6% 39 53 0.6% 4 7.5% 40 45 0.5% 3 6.7% 41 28 0.3% 1 3.6% 42 15 0.2% 1 6.7% 8,199 100.0% 557 6.8%You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
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