Baseball Prospectus home
  
  


rssOur Latest Blog Entries
03-03Yankees-Pirates, Phils-FSU, 3/3 by Joh...
03-02Braves-Mets, 3/2 by John Perrotto
03-01Clay Davenport Now at BP Full-Time by ...

April 9, 2008, 03:18 PM ET
Hitters and Pitchers peaks

by Clay Davenport

Kevin had a question in his chat today:
> mtmeyers6 (1:04:52 PM): anyway, I feel like BP did a study a few years ago
> about pitchers peaks, and how they peak earlier than hitters. do you have
> any recollection of this? I searched the site, but couldn’t find what I was
> looking for.

I’m not sure what mtmeyers6 was looking for, but I ran a quick and dirty study, looking at

a) players who peaked (had their single best WARP3 season; ties go to the youngest) since 1947, and

b) had at least a 2.0 WARP3 in that season

The results:

P H
Average 27.06 27.21

Median 27 27

Mode 26 26

SD 3.42 2.91

There were nearly equal numbers of Pitchers (2061) and Hitters (2106) in the study, and the distributions are fairly equal. Both hitters and pitchers were most likely to peak at age 26 or 27. The pitcher’s chart is noticeably wider (the higher standard deviation). As a result, pitchers were more than twice as likely to peak at age 22 or younger than hitters (139 pitchers to 66 hitters), and were also about twice as likely to peak at 34 or older (95 to 51).

The histogram:

Age Hitters Pitchers

19 0 1
20 7 11
21 14 47
22 45 80
23 135 155
24 171 183
25 249 243
26 292 273
27 285 236
28 247 212
29 237 179
30 142 120
31 111 98
32 80 71
33 40 57
34 23 42
35 15 16
36 9 17
37 3 11
38 0 3
39 0 4
40 0 0
41 1 0
42 0 0
43 0 1
>43 0 1

The >43 pitcher is Satchel Paige, the 43-year-old pitcher is Diomedes Olivo, the 41-yo hitter was Bob Boone, and the 19-yo pitcher was Gary Nolan, to address the singleton outliers.

The results are similar with other WARP3 cutoffs.

0 comments have been left for this post.

BP Comment Quick Links

No comments have been added to this article yet.
You must be logged in to post a comment. Not a subscriber? Sign up today!

Baseball Prospectus Home  |  Terms of Service  |  Privacy Policy  |  Customer Service  |  Contact Us
Baseball Prospectus Unfiltered is powered by WordPress.
Copyright © 1996-2010 Prospectus Entertainment Ventures, LLC.