re: Poz on Hamilton and Pujols

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So no thoughts on my examples?

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sure. Some players age well. It happens. No one says it doesn't. I'm talking about on average, so instead of taking the cherry picked best examples, I looked at the top five producers in 2006 and see how they did the last five seasons (2007-2012). Your argument was that more recent players don't have the same decline as players from the 80s or 90s. So I tested that theory against the most recently completed 5-season timeperiod.

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You come up with a group of players based off how well they play in one particular season.

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that was the article's thesis. It works for any season. The article used 1988 (and also used WAR, I changed it to OPS+ due to my dislike of WAR). You argued against that thesis saying recent times have changed that due to advances in health and nutrition. So I used 2006, the most recent year we could use and have a full five-year lookback.

And the theory held.

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Did the fact Emil brown and Gary Matthews on your list not say "wait, this isn't going to make much sense."

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No, it rather supported my theory that players decline faster than we like to think. The fact Emil Brown was in the top five Age 31 players in 2006 shows how quickly players age. We scrape the barrel pretty quickly. Though I did use six players in the Age 32 group, mainly so I could throw out Emil and use Damon. But I included Emil Brown as part of the study in the interest of both honesty and completeness.

I'm not cherry picking data. I honestly didn't know what it would say. To be honest, I expected some players to improve. I was honestly surprised ALL declined.

And guy like Abreu, Damon, and Nomar WERE great players. Are we arguing that the age 32 group there isn't full of great players. Todd Helton wasn't great?

This rather supports another on of my pet theories: I hate when people knock players for being "mere compilers". It's really HARD to be a compiler. It's tough to continue to be good enough to hang on and keep a starting job and keep producing in your mid to late 30s. Only truly great players can usually do it.