Career Trajectories

[Henry]

Attached is a study done in 1999 concerning player careers. It's an interesting read, and (hopefully) will set a basis for any discussions that involve the OOTP player curves. Here's the highlights that stood out for me....

1. Hitter's mean career length is 5.6 years.
2. Pitcher's mean career length is 4.8 years.
3. There were only 32 hitters (out of 4,728) that had careers 20 years or more.
4. There were only 31 pitchers (out of 3,803) that had careers 20 years or more.
5. The survival rate for 1st year Hitters is 77% (peaks at 87% in 7th year).
6. The survival rate for 1sy year pitchers is 73% (peaks at 84% in 5th year).
7. Pitchers do better in their 1st season than Hitters do.
8. Hitters who last more than a few seasons tend to improve each year until the decline that precedes their termination.
9. Pitchers typically do not improve with experience; pitchers with long careers just seem more successful in postponing the deteriorating performance that will end their careers.

Also, I've made some comments on the charts....

Figure 4
It's clear to me here that both hitters and pitchers, on average, start to become irratic after about 10 career years. This variance continues (and increases) to the end of their career,

Figures 5 (Hitters) and 6 (Pitchers)
One of our long standing discussion is how "quickly" a player declines at the end of his career. From Figure 5, it is clear that 1-7 year careers generally decline in a period of 1-2 years. Eight year careers and higher tend to take longer to decline - but - it's still apparent that once the final decline starts, it pretty much takes 1-2 years to culminate.

For Pitchers, it looks like a 1-2 year decline for careers between 1 and 6 years. Once they get to their 7th year, it takes about 4-5 years to culminate.

Henry

Click here for article

[ctorg]

That's quite interesting. It's funny how our impression of how things work is often so different from how things really work.

[clarnzz]

Guess with us having ratings it's a little easier to determine who will survive and who won't than in real life where it's not near as easy to predict.

From those studies and my OOTP experience it does seem that there aren't enough players reaching 20yr+ careers.

[Gastric ReFlux]

I agree. Major league baseball doesn't have nearly enough players going over 20 years and playing into their 40s.

[sporr]

Very very interesting.

[clarnzz]

Originally posted by Gastric ReFlux
I agree. Major league baseball doesn't have nearly enough players going over 20 years and playing into their 40s.

Guess your right, other than Clemens there isn't much.

Even Bonds playing 2 more years is uncertain.

[dougaiton]

I agree this is a great study, but I'd like to know if there was any change over time. To what extent has things like the extended rosters about in September extended player's lifespans? The growth of relievers and pinch-hitters as a profession? And most importantly of all, expansion of both teams and minor leagues?

This is a great study, but we might want to think about some of the inconsistencies in a sample ranging from 1901-1998.

EDIT: This is a pretty pointless post, and I don't know enough stats to do another test. Rather than criticism of an excellent study, it's really an attempt to stimulate discussion about what we might want to change for historical settings etc.

[Gastric ReFlux]

Originally posted by clarnzz
Guess your right, other than Clemens there isn't much.

Even Bonds playing 2 more years is uncertain.

I hope they fix this with the next patch.

[Cowboys3356]

Hopefully OOTP will take a look at this study and fix the game to better reflect real life performance.

[Henry]

I did some math based on the charts.....

	Hitters			Pitchers		
Years	Srv%	#	Avg	Srv%	#	Avg Career
0		1000			1000	
1	77%	770		0.73	730	
2	80%	616		0.76	555	
3	84%	517		0.82	455	
4	84%	435		0.81	368	4.8 yrs
5	85%	369	5.6 yrs	0.84	310	
6	86%	318		0.81	251	
7	87%	276		0.81	203	
8	85%	235		0.82	167	
9	83%	195		0.79	132	
10	81%	158		0.79	104	
11	81%	128		0.78	81	
12	76%	97		0.77	62	
13	78%	76		0.75	47	
14	75%	57		0.66	31	
15	72%	41		0.72	22	
16	64%	26		0.76	17	
17	70%	18		0.67	11	
18	57%	10		0.79	9	
19	62%	6		0.81	7	
20	55%	4		0.61	4	
21	45%	2		0.55	2	
22	35%	1		0.45	1	
23	25%	0		0.35	0	
24	15%	0		0.25	0	
25	5%	0		0.15	0

For every 1,000 Hitters or Pitchers starting their career, the chart shows how many are left at various points from 1-25 years (ps: the last 5 years I simply extrapolated at 5% per year).

When looking at this, however, be careful... it makes sense for a 19-20 year old, but a player starting later (even though he follows the same chart) would have to have some added code to insure he dropped off early in the cycle.

I don't know if this helps Markus or not - but it does give us some basis to compare when we "feel" a player isn't following a realistic curve.

(It's also interesting to note that even if you make it to the show, you only have a 50% chance of lasting 3 years)

[Cuss16]

pitchers only can get worse, that stinks.

[gmo]

That is fantastic work and a good read. Makes me wonder about the reasons external to the basic development curve why guys get their initial chances and why they become washed up (injuries and bad team going young come to mind) and how that helps contribute to the results of the study.

[Skipaway]

Originally posted by Cuss16
pitchers only can get worse, that stinks.

Not always. Read this example of a sudden talent bump.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/column...rob&id=1609941

[Eric]

There's always the choice of moving your pitcher to a closer - Eckersley, Smoltz and Gagne.

I wonder if the expanding available talent accounts for the drop-off of long timers. I don't recall as many non-native players in the Major Leagues twenty years ago. Now they seem to dominate. With the wider pool of players, the older players who decline can't compete.

[Henry]

Originally posted by Eric
There's always the choice of moving your pitcher to a closer - Eckersley, Smoltz and Gagne.

I wonder if the expanding available talent accounts for the drop-off of long timers. I don't recall as many non-native players in the Major Leagues twenty years ago. Now they seem to dominate. With the wider pool of players, the older players who decline can't compete.

The study speaks to this indirectly...

First, notice that for hitters and pitchers of all career lengths, the average standardized terminal-year performance is substantially below 0, the average performance of all major league players. The best average terminal-year values are —0.502 for ERAs and —0.539 for BAs, both for players terminated in their tenth year. Termination after such poor performances is not surprising because the decision to terminate is based on perceived inability to perform. Remember our earlier finding that the average first-year performance is —0.337 for hitters and —0.176 for pitchers. It makes sense to replace an older player with a standardized performance of —0.5 with a rookie whose expected standardized performance is —0.3 or —0.2, particularly if the older player is more expensive. The precipitous decline in performance near career end challenges the wisdom of long-term contracts and confirms the wisdom of Branch Rickey’s dictum that it is better to trade a veteran a few years early than one year too late.

Basically, there comes a point where the unproven, but average, rookie is an equal (and cheaper) choice than the declining vet.

[Mel_Ott]

Memo to Dusty Baker:

"Basically, there comes a point where the unproven, but average, rookie is an equal (and cheaper) choice than the declining vet."

But what about Proven Veterans and their Clubhouse Presence?

[clarnzz]

I also think they career trajectories is an ever changing thing based on the players performance. Doesn't a pitcher who wins 20 games in his first year have a higher chance of being around in 10 years than a pitcher that wins 2? Or a batter that hits .300 for 4 years have a higher chance of being around in 10 years than someone who bats .220. Personally I think it's a really difficult thing to simplify.

[Henry]

Originally posted by clarnzz
I also think they career trajectories is an ever changing thing based on the players performance. Doesn't a pitcher who wins 20 games in his first year have a higher chance of being around in 10 years than a pitcher that wins 2? Or a batter that hits .300 for 4 years have a higher chance of being around in 10 years than someone who bats .220. Personally I think it's a really difficult thing to simplify.

Generally speaking, yes... but the surprising facts here are that most players don't last past 5-6 years period. Using the charts I calculated from the study, only 679 players out of 2,000 would have careers longer than 5 years.

That points out that only the cream of the crop goes past the 5 year point (less than 1 in 3 players). And only 262 out of 2,000 make it to ten years.

Looking at charts 5 and 6, its apparent that those 262 players are the ones that start out like gangbusters and stay that way.

[jbone]

A couple quick things:

1. The question then has to be, who is "the cream of the crop?" What % were drafted in the first round of the amateur draft, as opposed to the second, or third, or so on? And what % were signed internationally (i.e., latin america, asia)?

2. The second point that I think is big and I want to bring up is that this research is for batting average, not total player performance. For instance, it's well documented that hitters tend to experience a spike in their HR total once they reach ages 30 or 31. Also, (and this is just a guess), I can speculate that players may gain patience at the plate as they reach the second half of their career. The study done by those guys is great, except that it is only helpful for BA, and we shouldn't assume that power and patience at the plate follow the same trends as batting average. In fact, we should probably assume they don't.

[jbone]

But still, a great find, Henry!