"Old" guys are dominating baseball this season

[Flash- bd]

11 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Total 2022 rWAR, non-pitchers, by age (number at each age):

21: 2.4 (3)

22: 1.2 (11)

23: 5.9 (24)

24: 9.5 (26)

25: 19.2 (57)

26: 6.3 (50)

27: 25.4 (77)

28: 17.6 (55)

29: 23.2 (57)

30: 15.9 (42)

31: 9.3 (43)

32: 15.1 (37)

33: 3.2 (21)

34: 5.4 (13)

35: -0.2 (10)

36: 1.6 (4)

37: -0.5 (3)

38: -0.6 (5)

39: -0.7 (3)

40: 0.0 (0)

41: -0.2 (1)

42: 0.2 (1)

That looks typical to me.  Players are peaking around 27 as always.  The total value of all non-pitchers over the age of 34 is below replacement.

Doesn't this analysis need WAR/g to make it a bit more complete? Surely the distribution of the amount of players playing at certain ages (that is, no doubt from 25-30 you have more players active than 30-35, or 20-25) is relevant here. 

[DrungoHazewood]

8 hours ago, Flash- bd said:

Doesn't this analysis need WAR/g to make it a bit more complete? Surely the distribution of the amount of players playing at certain ages (that is, no doubt from 25-30 you have more players active than 30-35, or 20-25) is relevant here. 

Perhaps.  But just the number of players and total WAR represents the fact that the group gets selected and is more productive in their mid-to-late 20s. WAR/g would probably reinforce these conclusions because the better players are concentrated at ages around 27 and would get more playing time.

It's also important to remember that at each age bucket there are (let's say) 100 players of roughly MLB quality.  The ones not on the list aren't good enough or healthy enough to play at that age.  So in this example at age 21 there are three current MLBers, but probably 97 potential MLBers who haven't advanced enough to play or are hurt.  Similar at age 38, there are five MLBers, but 95 who had MLB ability at some point.  If you were to include those players and their likely production the WAR totals would be much, much more skewed.  The 38-year-olds would be at like -40 or -80 as a group, instead of the -0.6 from the five guys who're good enough to make a MLB roster.  Something like that for the 21-year-olds, too.  But the 27-year-olds would only have 23 players of "ballast", who are not currently capable of performing in the majors.

[MarCakes21]

18 hours ago, eddie83 said:

This is interesting from last year.
AL by OPS in 2021

25 and under .727

26-30 .732

31-35 .730

36 and up .731

PA’s by age 

25 and under  19,521

26-30      50,583

31-35       17,721

36 and up  3,298

 

so ages 26-30 had more PA’s then all other ages combined by roughly 10,000 

Yes, that's my point.  So its unsurprising that age 26-30 had the most rWAR because they had greater than 50% of the PAs.  To do something statistically significant you'd have to do rWAR/PA by age bracket as the easiest method. 

[DrungoHazewood]

On 5/25/2022 at 8:05 PM, Frobby said:

So before we go off to far on this tangent, here are the AL OPS splits by age so far this year:

25 or under .702

26-30 .681

31-35 .662

36+ .646

 

 

19 hours ago, eddie83 said:

This is interesting from last year.
AL by OPS in 2021

25 and under .727

26-30 .732

31-35 .730

36 and up .731

PA’s by age 

25 and under  19,521

26-30      50,583

31-35       17,721

36 and up  3,298

 

so ages 26-30 had more PA’s then all other ages combined by roughly 10,000 

As I alluded to in my prior post, you have to remember that the large majority of very young and 31+ players would have very poor OPSes and other metrics if allowed to play in the majors.  Robinson Chirinos is about the same age as Robert Andino, who's been out of the majors for six years and would be OPSing like .425 today.  Paul Goldschmidt was born the same year as 70 different MLBers who haven't appeared in a game since 2014, and would be sub-Chris Davis level players if they tried today. 

So in some kind of hypothetical world where everyone plays regularly in the majors from age 20-40 the numbers would be something like:

OPS by age:

25 and under, .600

26-30, .725

31-35: .625

35 and up: .475

[DrungoHazewood]

56 minutes ago, MarCakes21 said:

Yes, that's my point.  So its unsurprising that age 26-30 had the most rWAR because they had greater than 50% of the PAs.  To do something statistically significant you'd have to do rWAR/PA by age bracket as the easiest method. 

But they have, by far, the most plate appearances because they are, by far, the most productive.

There are some influences other than quality, such as contracts, and uneven distribution of talent, and uncertainty of future value.  But it's mostly the best players get the most playing time.

[DrungoHazewood]

There was an (in)famous study about 10-15 years ago where the author concluded that there was no aging curve in baseball since 35-year-olds in the Majors hit about as well as 27-year-olds. What he was missing, of course, was that 90% of the 35-year-olds were no longer in the dataset because they weren't good enough to play any more. The only 35-year-olds left were the guys who'd been 27-year-old stars.  While 27-year-olds get the whole spectrum.

[Sports Guy]

He was hurt a lot last year and people just seemed to forget about him but Trout is still the best in the game.

[Frobby]

11 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

He was hurt a lot last year and people just seemed to forget about him but Trout is still the best in the game.

I really regret that I’ve never seen him play in person.  I have tickets to the Angels-O’s in July and hope to remedy that.  I had tickets last year too but he was injured.  Had to settle for watching the O’s end their 19-game losing streak by beating the Angels on a night when Ohtani was pitching.  

[Porky]

On 5/25/2022 at 8:05 PM, Frobby said:

So before we go off to far on this tangent, here are the AL OPS splits by age so far this year:

25 or under .702

26-30 .681

31-35 .662

36+ .646

 

It would be interesting to see this broken down by position. I feel like there's a lot of older backup catchers who hang around a while and might pull these numbers down in the 31-35 and 36+ group - Kurt Suzuki, Stephen Vogt, Martin Maldonado, Jason Castro, Robinson Chirinos come to mind.

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, Porky said:

It would be interesting to see this broken down by position. I feel like there's a lot of older backup catchers who hang around a while and might pull these numbers down in the 31-35 and 36+ group - Kurt Suzuki, Stephen Vogt, Martin Maldonado, Jason Castro, Robinson Chirinos come to mind.

That's not really it.  For example, here are all the 35-year-old non-pitchers in the majors in 2022:

 

Rk             Player OPS+ Season Age Team Lg  G  PA  AB  R  H 1B 2B 3B HR RBI
1    Michael Brantley  129   2022  35  HOU AL 39 169 147 16 41 29  8  1  3  16
2          Jose Abreu  113   2022  35  CHW AL 42 180 157 22 37 21 11  0  5  19
3           Darin Ruf   99   2022  35  SFG NL 42 172 142 25 33 25  5  0  3  17
4    Andrew McCutchen   94   2022  35  MIL NL 32 141 128 16 33 24  6  0  3  17
5    Brandon Crawford   88   2022  35  SFG NL 40 166 148 21 33 23  5  1  4  19
6    Charlie Blackmon   86   2022  35  COL NL 38 167 149 21 33 19  7  1  6  18
7     Alcides Escobar   54   2022  35  WSN NL 31 111 104  9 22 18  3  1  0   7
8        Jason Castro   34   2022  35  HOU AL 18  49  40  3  5  3  2  0  0   1
9    Martin Maldonado   29   2022  35  HOU AL 33 114 100 13 12  7  2  0  3  10
10         Manny Pina    8   2022  35  ATL NL  5  17  14  1  2  2  0  0  0   2

There are only 10.  Sure, the bottom three are catchers, but the median OPS+ of the other seven is something like 95.

There are five 38-year-olds including Chirinos and Kurt Suzuki.  But the other three are OPSing 102, 87 and 60.  But then you have to remember that the 38-year-old age group also includes players like Jeremy Hermida, Melky Cabrera, Prince Fielder, BJ Upton, Troy Tulowitzki, etc who would be dragging the group down further than the catchers if only they hadn't quit playing baseball years ago.

[SteveA]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

I really regret that I’ve never seen him play in person.  I have tickets to the Angels-O’s in July and hope to remedy that.  I had tickets last year too but he was injured.  Had to settle for watching the O’s end their 19-game losing streak by beating the Angels on a night when Ohtani was pitching.  

I was at Oriole Park for the game where he hit his first major league HR.   He was still 19 years old, had been up for a week or so and was hitting under .200.