I wanted to try something just for fun.  Well, perhaps your idea of fun doesn’t include aging curves for Fantasy Baseball Hall of Fame members, but maybe it peaks your interest none the less.  This idea came about after creating the player chart for one of our newest honorees, Bret Saberhagen.  Sabes is almost assuredly the FBHOF’er that gave his owners more heartache than any other player on record.  Why?  He never had back to back great seasons.  One year, he is a Fantasy All Star, the following year he underperforms, and then he’s an All Star again as the cycle begins anew. What’s an owner to do?  In year 5, after good, bad, good, bad seasons what in the world will come next? Putting yourself in an owners shoes in the late 80’s, would you really expect a pitcher with talent to take every other year off?  Never.  We would all draft him thinking he turned the corner.  Anyway, his chart:

The results in tabular form:

1984 – Bad
1985 – Good
1986 – Bad
1987 – Good
1988 – Bad
1989 – Good
1990 – Bad
1991 – Good
1992 – Bad
1993 – Bad
1994 – Good

Amazing isn’t it.  Further, in creating similar charts for each of the Fantasy Baseball Hall of Famers I noticed a trend of most pitchers doing well early in their careers, while most batters got more of a late start.  This is anecdotal evidence for the moment, and what I propose to research today.

To illustrate my point, here are the careers of Dwight Gooden and Kirby Puckett.  One started slow but ended strong, the other just the opposite.

(And please keep in mind the Point Totals for pitchers do not have a one to one relationship with point totals for batters – a great batter season is about 10 FBHOF points, a great pitcher season is about 8.)

I said this was for fun and I meant it.  Looking at the careers of a handful of Fantasy Hall of Famers, some of which have data points going back prior the starting point of my data collecting isn’t entirely constructive.  Still, we should be able to get a feel for when batters begin to peak vs. when pitchers do, and at least lay the groundwork for a future debate.

The chart below depicts the average score for the FBHOF’ers based upon years of service.  It shows, in simpler terms, how each batter or pitcher did in Year 1, Year 2, etc.  Since the scoring for pitchers is different than the scoring for batters I tried to adjust the scale of y-axis to be similar.  As far as I can surmise, a batting fantasy season of 14.00 is about equal to a pitching fantasy season of 11.25.  Don’t get me wrong – a score of 14 is more valuable than a score of 11.25, but when trying to compare the aging trends of each it makes sense to normalize to a common scale.

What do we find?  We find I was wrong.  Batters, on average have better scores for the first 7 years or so, which is followed by a period where both are about equal up until year 13, and afterwards the pitchers fair better until retirement.  Sample size is a definite issue, and we don’t have 5 data sets for each position after year 20, so take the last four years with a grain of salt.

Batting Years 1 through 7

While better in years 1 and 2, batters didn’t really get things going until year 3.  The best Year 1 score belongs to Tim Raines in 1981 (12.9 Pts, .304 AVG, 61 R, 71 SB in the strike year) and the best Year 2 score was Alex Rodriguez’s 1996 season.  Out of all the Year 1-7 scores, these two were ranked just 45^th and 17^th respectively, meaning the vast majority of great seasons occurred in year 3 or later.

In fact, years 3, 4, 5, and 6 are the powerhouse years for batters, with no other period ranking as high.  Year 3 gems include Jose Canseco in 1988 (18.3 Pts) and Albert Pujols in 2003 (17.2 FBHOF points).  Year 4 studs were Jeff Bagwell (1994, 17.6 Pts) and another A-Rod season (1988, 15.9 Pts).  Year 5 has Pujols again (2005, 16 Pts), and some old school favorites in the form of early Barry Bonds (1990, 15.9 pts) and Kirby Puckett (1988, 15.8 pts).  For the record, the best Year 7 score belongs to Rickey Henderson, who scored 16.6 points in 1985.  In all, among the FBHOF batters, over 50% of the 10 point seasons occurred in years 1-7.

Some big name batters held scoring down during this self imposed period as well.  Gary Sheffield had terrible years in 1989 and 1991, and worse yet, Sammy Sosa faired poorly in those years and in 1992 as well.

Pitching Years 8 through 13

It’s almost unfair to the batters when thinking of the great pitching seasons turned in from Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, and Pedro Martinez during their peaks.  In years 8 through 13, Maddux and Martinez each have two seasons where they scored 16 or more points and Johnson had 3.  Keep in mind that scoring 16 points while contributing to only 4 categories is much more than an impressive feat, it’s legendary.

Breaking it down by year, Maddux (1994, 18.8 Pts), Johnson (1995, 16.1 Pts), and Martinez (1997, 15.7 Pts) were the 8^th year wonders.  Year nine saw Maddux again (17 pts in 1995) along with the best year teammate John Smoltz ever had, a 16.8 point gem in 1996.  Martinez was the class of both years 10 and 11, with two 18+ point campaigns in 1999 and 2000 which is followed by another two great seasons by Johnson to close out service years 12 and 13.

Of course, not all FBHOF pitchers were great during years 8 through 13.  Scoring during this time was held down by Fernando Valenzuela who couldn’t reach positive FBHOF points in six of eight seasons from 1988 to 1995.  Dwight Gooden (3 bad seasons) and Bret Saberhagen (2 bad ones) did almost as much damage themselves, scoring -18.7 points between them.

I’ll try to recap with a table:

Hmm, this may not help too much, it’s extremely busy.  But for those of you who love data you can pinpoint where the great seasons lie.  For example, 17 of 28 batters seasons in year 6 were of the 10.0 to 14.9 point variety.  Or the fact Year 3 and Year 5 each had 7 elite seasons (15+ points for batters or 12+ points for pitchers).  Let me recap the summarization:

Aha, now here is a chart that makes some sense.  The above shows the percentage of times a batter scored 10+ points and where a pitcher scored 8+ points for each season in the bigs.  For example, among all FBHOF batters, 73% of them scored 10 or more points in their fourth season in the majors.   They highest period is year 5, when almost 80% reached 10 points. 

Further, for batters there is a true “wheelhouse” at work here.  Very few were great their first year and the number improves in years two and three before a period of sustained greatness in years 4 through 6.  This is finally followed by a period of steady but slow decline.  No such pattern emerges for pitchers and in truth, no pattern exits period.  During no specific do pitchers sustain greatness at a 70% or better clip.  Similarly, there are no periods where they sustain a 50-69% period of greatness. 

What this ultimately proves is the fantasy proverb, “Never draft a pitcher in the first round”.  And it’s true - they simply aren’t as reliable as batters.