Poz on Hamilton and Pujols

Well the contract in 5 years Hamilton will be 36 and Albert 37. I don't think anyone expects them to perform at current level at that point. However, over next 3 seasons I would prefer them over Hosmer/Perez.

Yeah, the historical stuff on Mays and Mantle was interesting, but this is an eye opener:

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Pujols from 2003 to 2010 hit .334/.433/.635.
Pujols the last two years hit .292/.354/.528 … still very good but nowhere near the extraordinary eight-year stretch leading in.

Hamilton from 2008 to 2010 hit .315/.372/.543.
Hamilton the last two years hit .291/.350/.558 -- a touch up in slugging but quite a loss in average and on-base percentage. He's also a year younger than Pujols.

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And then Hamilton's road splits:

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Look at his great 2008 season:

Home: .345/.408/.611
Road: .263/.331/.448.

Or look at his 2010 MVP season:

Home: .390/.438/.750
Road: .327/.382/.512

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Those numbers should terrify Angel fans. Especially considering Anaheim is not a neutral park, it's an extreme pitcher's park.

It is damn near impossible to predict a 30 year olds future production.

The injury factor increases by a huge amount while their body is basically starting to fall apart.

That being said, we are talking about a future HOF and a player that would have been in the HOF if not for his drug use. It's a pretty difficult decision, but good young talent is hard to pass up.

There's a lot of fluff in that article.

For instance, the 5 guys with great 32 and 33 year old seasons: 2 did roids and the others played in the 70's and 80's and did not have the training available to them today.

Will these guys be the same player at 36 as they were at 32? No, I don't think anyone thinks that. But guys like torri hunter, konerko, thome, frank Thomas, etc prove that they can be pretty close.

And pujols & Hamilton even at 3/4ths of their best production are still all stars.

So yea, Brett Boone & Sammy Sosa broke down, is that so shocking?

So Fred Lynn didnt slug .500 any more, just a mere 480.

And so they may not both have an adj OPS of 170....honestly who cares? That's a cherry picked number to boost his argument. It doesn't mean they won't be affective

So baloo, you always say the player is still a prospect until he really proves himself. Usually when a player is traded(wil Myers recently)

That's pretty much what Hosmer is at this point. No doubt very talented. But you are telling me right now you'd take 2 prospects over 2 guys who have each finished top 5 in an MVP voting the last 2 seasons....

I just want to get that straight.... That's not even getting into Salvador Perez... A sabermetricians nightmare with that OBP.

A guy like Hamilton 43 HR 128RBI last year....again people talking like he has already fell off a cliff.

Im taking Hamilton & Pujols. People forget that even when they fade a bit their production still tops 95% of others.

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That's pretty much what Hosmer is at this point. No doubt very talented. But you are telling me right now you'd take 2 prospects over 2 guys who have each finished top 5 in an MVP voting the last 2 seasons....

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First off, Hosmer is no longer a prospect. He's a MLB player. He's been in the league for two seasons. He's a young player and still improving, but he's not a prospect anymore. He's a player. There's a difference between a guy in the minors and a guy who has made the jump to the majors. While Hosmer was disappointing last year, he has shown he can hit MLB pitching.

but no... it's Poz saying it, and I found his argument interesting. I'd rather have Hosmer and Gordon, though. Just because of my natural skepticism of prospects. But the point is about the aging process. I did not say ALL players decline at 33, I just said they were MORE LIKELY to decline. Cherry picking a few names who did well in their late career doesn't disprove this theory. Eddie Murray had an effective late career, too.

The argument presented was:

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You can do this year-by-year too. The best 32-/33-year-olds in 1982, for instance, were Cecil Cooper, Toby Harrah, Bill Russell and Mike Schmidt. Their combined WAR over the next five years was 46.9 -- almost two-thirds of it coming from Schmidt.

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i'm not a fan of WAR, so let's use OPS+ for players with at least 400 AB's. The last year we can get a five-year lookahead is 2006. So let's look at how the best 31 and 32 year olds in 2006 did in 2007-2012, to test your recency theory:

31
Vlad 329/382/552 138
Rolen 296/369/518 126
Sexson 264/338/504 117
Matthews 313/371/495 121
Brown 287/358/457 109

First off, that's a pretty horrid group of 31 year olds. Sorry. That's just who we had. When Emil Brown is the best 31 year old, it says something about the aging process. Anyway, here's their next five years:

32-36
Vlad 303/355/490 122
Rolen 276/344/441 107
Sexson 311/306/392 86 (out of baseball at age 34)
Matthews 245/322/377 84 (out of baseball at age 36)
Brown 250/298/366 78 (out of baseball at age 35)

All of them declined, and only Vlad was still an All-Star caliber player. OK, Gary Matthews and Emil Brown were never all that great to begin with, but Richie Sexson cratered and Rolen went from potential Hall of Famer to a merely decent bat in the lineup.

32
Abreu 297/424/462 126
Damon 285/359/482 115
Dye 315/385/622 151
Nomar 303/367/505 120
Helton 302/404/476 118
Tejeda 330/379/498 126

I took a sixth 32-year-old to include Damon, but you can throw him out if you wish. Now, this is a group of star players who all received big contracts at some point. How did this group of studs age?

33-37
Abreu 277/367/432 115
Damon 273/349/426 107
Dye 267/334/496 112 (out of baseball at age 36)
Nomar 279/325/395 87 (out of baseball at age 36)
Helton 293/396/445 113
Tejeda 284/323/411 97

The answer: Not well. Only Abreu was still a top tier player, and that's barely. Don't be fooled by Helton's OPS+, as he's been a part time player for three seasons now. Dye and Nomar both only lasted three more years, with Nomar's descent being rather dramatic. Damon is still trading in on his Idiots aura and received another nice contract this year, but he's a slightly above league average outfielder now.

Every one of these guys declined. All were All-Star level players, some arguably HOF level, and only one was able to retain All-Star level value, and that's giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Older players decline. Even great ones.

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i'm not a fan of WAR, so let's use OPS+ for players with at least 400 AB's. The last year we can get a five-year lookahead is 2006. So let's look at how the best 31 and 32 year olds in 2006 did in 2007-2012, to test your recency theory:

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I took the top-5 31 and 32 year olds in OPS+ (with at least 400 AB) in 2006 and see how they did over the next five years. It's a rough way to get us to the top performing 31 and 32 year olds and how they did in the most recently completed five-year period.

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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.