From the Score (I know, I know):

[Jehrico]

27 is prime age. I don't expect Pierre to play as poorly as he did last year, but he'll likely never play at the level he did for the two seasons before last, either.

I would say that 27 is the beginning of many position player's prime years, but it's certainly not the peak. I don't know if anyone's ever done a study, but I highly doubt that 27 on average is the most productive year for most players out there.

 

That's actually exactly what somebody did. 27 is the average prime year. That doesn't mean guys fall off cliffs at 28 or 29. What usually happens is players reach their peak at 27, but they can stay relatively close to that peak for several years after, a sort of plateau after the highest height.

 

I find that hard to believe. Gotta link?

 

Unfortunately, since I last read about all this at least 5 or 6 years ago, I don't have a link, but I can back up goony on this. In fact, I thought it to be common knowledge.

 

Sorry, I still don't buy it. Look at the last 10 (different) MVP winners. Look at the All-Star game roster from this last year, and for anyone over 32, what were their most productive years? You had Bonds, not even close. Kent's most productive years were 29-32. Chipper Jones...27, you got that one. Sammy...2001 when he was 32. Larry Walker...30-32. Caminiti...33. Bagwell's best years were 29-33, other than the fluke season when he was 26. Go down the all-star rosters, league leaders in OPS, past MVPs, you'll find the majority of them do NOT have their best years at or before 27. The only explanation I can think of for your claim is your average role player who never does anything significant might peak at 27, and that's why they never did anything significant. I don't know. But looking at the quality players in the league, they don't peak at 27. I don't think Pierre, by any means, has necessarily had his best year.

[Blueheart05]

27 is prime age. I don't expect Pierre to play as poorly as he did last year, but he'll likely never play at the level he did for the two seasons before last, either.

I would say that 27 is the beginning of many position player's prime years, but it's certainly not the peak. I don't know if anyone's ever done a study, but I highly doubt that 27 on average is the most productive year for most players out there.

 

That's actually exactly what somebody did. 27 is the average prime year. That doesn't mean guys fall off cliffs at 28 or 29. What usually happens is players reach their peak at 27, but they can stay relatively close to that peak for several years after, a sort of plateau after the highest height.

 

I find that hard to believe. Gotta link?

 

Unfortunately, since I last read about all this at least 5 or 6 years ago, I don't have a link, but I can back up goony on this. In fact, I thought it to be common knowledge.

 

Sorry, I still don't buy it. Look at the last 10 (different) MVP winners. Look at the All-Star game roster from this last year, and for anyone over 32, what were their most productive years? You had Bonds, not even close. Kent's most productive years were 29-32. Chipper Jones...27, you got that one. Sammy...2001 when he was 32. Larry Walker...30-32. Caminiti...33. Bagwell's best years were 29-33, other than the fluke season when he was 26. Go down the all-star rosters, league leaders in OPS, past MVPs, you'll find the majority of them do NOT have their best years at or before 27. The only explanation I can think of for your claim is your average role player who never does anything significant might peak at 27, and that's why they never did anything significant. I don't know. But looking at the quality players in the league, they don't peak at 27. I don't think Pierre, by any means, has necessarily had his best year.

 

One could argue that some (or all) of the players mentioned were chemically enhanced which allowed them to perform at advanced (athletic) years.

[Jehrico]

27 is prime age. I don't expect Pierre to play as poorly as he did last year, but he'll likely never play at the level he did for the two seasons before last, either.

I would say that 27 is the beginning of many position player's prime years, but it's certainly not the peak. I don't know if anyone's ever done a study, but I highly doubt that 27 on average is the most productive year for most players out there.

 

That's actually exactly what somebody did. 27 is the average prime year. That doesn't mean guys fall off cliffs at 28 or 29. What usually happens is players reach their peak at 27, but they can stay relatively close to that peak for several years after, a sort of plateau after the highest height.

 

I find that hard to believe. Gotta link?

 

Unfortunately, since I last read about all this at least 5 or 6 years ago, I don't have a link, but I can back up goony on this. In fact, I thought it to be common knowledge.

 

Sorry, I still don't buy it. Look at the last 10 (different) MVP winners. Look at the All-Star game roster from this last year, and for anyone over 32, what were their most productive years? You had Bonds, not even close. Kent's most productive years were 29-32. Chipper Jones...27, you got that one. Sammy...2001 when he was 32. Larry Walker...30-32. Caminiti...33. Bagwell's best years were 29-33, other than the fluke season when he was 26. Go down the all-star rosters, league leaders in OPS, past MVPs, you'll find the majority of them do NOT have their best years at or before 27. The only explanation I can think of for your claim is your average role player who never does anything significant might peak at 27, and that's why they never did anything significant. I don't know. But looking at the quality players in the league, they don't peak at 27. I don't think Pierre, by any means, has necessarily had his best year.

 

One could argue that some (or all) of the players mentioned were chemically enhanced which allowed them to perform at advanced (athletic) years.

 

Granted, maybe some...but don't you think that some of the others that weren't ever all-stars or what not were doing it too? I think you would find 'roids on both sides of the fence.

[CardsFanInChiTown]

27 is prime age. I don't expect Pierre to play as poorly as he did last year, but he'll likely never play at the level he did for the two seasons before last, either.

I would say that 27 is the beginning of many position player's prime years, but it's certainly not the peak. I don't know if anyone's ever done a study, but I highly doubt that 27 on average is the most productive year for most players out there.

 

That's actually exactly what somebody did. 27 is the average prime year. That doesn't mean guys fall off cliffs at 28 or 29. What usually happens is players reach their peak at 27, but they can stay relatively close to that peak for several years after, a sort of plateau after the highest height.

 

I find that hard to believe. Gotta link?

 

Unfortunately, since I last read about all this at least 5 or 6 years ago, I don't have a link, but I can back up goony on this. In fact, I thought it to be common knowledge.

 

Sorry, I still don't buy it. Look at the last 10 (different) MVP winners. Look at the All-Star game roster from this last year, and for anyone over 32, what were their most productive years? You had Bonds, not even close. Kent's most productive years were 29-32. Chipper Jones...27, you got that one. Sammy...2001 when he was 32. Larry Walker...30-32. Caminiti...33. Bagwell's best years were 29-33, other than the fluke season when he was 26. Go down the all-star rosters, league leaders in OPS, past MVPs, you'll find the majority of them do NOT have their best years at or before 27. The only explanation I can think of for your claim is your average role player who never does anything significant might peak at 27, and that's why they never did anything significant. I don't know. But looking at the quality players in the league, they don't peak at 27. I don't think Pierre, by any means, has necessarily had his best year.

 

This BP article touchs on it a little bit...

 

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=2659

 

Take the average value of the four players in our chart, and you come up with a perfectly well-behaved curve that conforms with more or less all of the usual assumptions about the progress that a major league baseball player is likely to experience over the course of his career. He starts out slowly upon his debut, improves rapidly through his early 20s, reaches his peak at age 26 or 27, and then begins his decline, which is slow at first but soon becomes more rapid. It all looks nice and orderly, and it is curves like this that many forecasting systems are predicated upon. We expect a player's productivity to decrease, say, by 3% between age 29 and age 30, and get very mad at our forecasting systems when he doesn't.

 

 

Another Quote...

 

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/library/Offense/Predicting/index.php

 

When it comes to personnel decisions at the major-league level, baseball executives are paid to predict the future. They have a leg up on Nostradamus and his ilk, though, because scouting and statistical research illuminate trends and tendencies that shape most players' careers. One of these tendencies, which has formed the basis for many tenets of performance analysis, is that players tend to peak at age 27. That conclusion was reached by Bill James and published in his 1987 Baseball Abstract.

[Sabermetrician]

http://www.stephent.com/jays/sabr.html

 

Age

 

On average, players tend to improve until age 27, and decline after age 27.

 

Bill James' detailed study is in his 1982 Baseball Abstract (which I don't have) but he summarizes the findings in This Time Let's Not Eat the Bones, p. 460:

 

* "Almost every accomplishment (twenty-win seasons, hundred-RBI seasons, . . . ) is more common at age 27 than any other age." (Pat Hentgen won his Cy Young award at age 27 last year.)

* "The peak period for ballplayers is not twenty-eight to thirty-two, as was once believed, but twenty-five to twenty-nine."

* "All players as a group retain 77 percent of their peak value at the age of thirty, and barely over one-half of their peak value (53 percent) at the age of thirty-two." (I'm not sure what his measure of "value" is here, but I'm guessing it's relative to the typical Triple-A player). There's a note on "important differences" for "superstars" because their major league careers are so much longer, but no details are given in this summary.

* "Contrary to popular belief, power pitchers age more slowly and last much longer than do 'finesse' or 'control' type pitchers."

 

The age 27 finding applied to all groups studied except knuckleball pitchers and players "specifically selected because they had their best years at some other age." No one is claiming that every player steadily improves to age 27 and steadily declines thereafter; in fact, almost none fit the pattern that precisely. These are averages over groups of players.

 

The Jays for the '97 season added Dan Plesac (age 35), Roger Clemens (age 34), Benito Santiago (age 32), Orlando Merced (age 30) and Carlos Garcia (age 29, he claims). They also extended the contract of Joe Carter (age 37) and tried Ruben Sierra (age 31) when they discovered they had hitting problems. Last year, and for a couple months this year, they gave significant playing time to Jacob Brumfield (age 32) and Juan Samuel (age 36). Also last year, Otis Nixon (now age 38 ) and Erik Hanson (age 32), were given multi-year contracts. Overall, the Jays' investment in older players has had supposedly "disappointing" results, but really these results are the kind that should have been expected based on the performance-age pattern found by James. It should not be surprising that two of the Jays' three above-average hitters have turned out to be Carlos Delgado (age 25) and Shawn Green (age 24), and that the dumped John Olerud (age 28 ) is having a great year with the Mets.

 

It's not hard to see how a poor team, like the Expos, can have "surprising success" every year, while a rich team, like the Jays, or the Yankees of the 80's, can have "disappointing" results every year. The poor team has almost no choice but to invest in "unproven" players, but in fact their minor league numbers do prove something, and because they are young, they normally improve for a few years. The rich team is tempted to invest in "proven" free-agents, but because they are over 30, they normally don't perform as well as in the glory years associated with them. Of course, a "smart" rich team, like the Jays under Pat Gillick, has an advantage over the poor teams because it won't have to let go of a good young player still in his prime. The good news for Jays fans is that the Jays have at least been smart enough to keep most of their good young players (not counting Olerud and Alomar), especially their good minor leaguers, so the Jays are in position to have a winning team essentially as soon as they are ready to stop playing the under-performing veterans.

 

Attention general managers: always check on which side of 27 a player's age is when evaluating the player.

[Jehrico]

27 is prime age. I don't expect Pierre to play as poorly as he did last year, but he'll likely never play at the level he did for the two seasons before last, either.

I would say that 27 is the beginning of many position player's prime years, but it's certainly not the peak. I don't know if anyone's ever done a study, but I highly doubt that 27 on average is the most productive year for most players out there.

 

That's actually exactly what somebody did. 27 is the average prime year. That doesn't mean guys fall off cliffs at 28 or 29. What usually happens is players reach their peak at 27, but they can stay relatively close to that peak for several years after, a sort of plateau after the highest height.

 

I find that hard to believe. Gotta link?

 

Unfortunately, since I last read about all this at least 5 or 6 years ago, I don't have a link, but I can back up goony on this. In fact, I thought it to be common knowledge.

 

Sorry, I still don't buy it. Look at the last 10 (different) MVP winners. Look at the All-Star game roster from this last year, and for anyone over 32, what were their most productive years? You had Bonds, not even close. Kent's most productive years were 29-32. Chipper Jones...27, you got that one. Sammy...2001 when he was 32. Larry Walker...30-32. Caminiti...33. Bagwell's best years were 29-33, other than the fluke season when he was 26. Go down the all-star rosters, league leaders in OPS, past MVPs, you'll find the majority of them do NOT have their best years at or before 27. The only explanation I can think of for your claim is your average role player who never does anything significant might peak at 27, and that's why they never did anything significant. I don't know. But looking at the quality players in the league, they don't peak at 27. I don't think Pierre, by any means, has necessarily had his best year.

 

This BP article touchs on it a little bit...

 

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=2659

 

Take the average value of the four players in our chart, and you come up with a perfectly well-behaved curve that conforms with more or less all of the usual assumptions about the progress that a major league baseball player is likely to experience over the course of his career. He starts out slowly upon his debut, improves rapidly through his early 20s, reaches his peak at age 26 or 27, and then begins his decline, which is slow at first but soon becomes more rapid. It all looks nice and orderly, and it is curves like this that many forecasting systems are predicated upon. We expect a player's productivity to decrease, say, by 3% between age 29 and age 30, and get very mad at our forecasting systems when he doesn't.

 

 

Another Quote...

 

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/library/Offense/Predicting/index.php

 

When it comes to personnel decisions at the major-league level, baseball executives are paid to predict the future. They have a leg up on Nostradamus and his ilk, though, because scouting and statistical research illuminate trends and tendencies that shape most players' careers. One of these tendencies, which has formed the basis for many tenets of performance analysis, is that players tend to peak at age 27. That conclusion was reached by Bill James and published in his 1987 Baseball Abstract.

 

I still don't buy it. The first link is based on 4 imaginary players...hardly proof of anything scientific or reliable. I don't have Bill James abstract, but I still disagree. I went through and calculated the average age of the 100 best OBP and OPS seasons in baseball, and the average age for OBP was 29.13, and OPS was 29 even. And again, go down the list of MVPs, and take the average age of their most productive seasons (not always their MVP year). I didn't go down through them all, but of the 20 or so I went through, all had superior seasons beyond 27.

 

edit: typo in the last line, shouldn't say all, but rather most

[CubinNY]

Does it really matter? At age 28 or 29 Piere is no hall of famer. Hell, he isn't even the top CFer in baseball. At best his is an upgrade over what the Cubs had last year, but that isn't saying much. IMO, you don't give up the likes of Pinto for one year of Piere.

 

Doubles show what type of hitter he is. I don't want Slappy in a Cub uniform if it means giving up talent. If Pie rights himself there will be no place to Play Slappy anyway.

[Jehrico]

Does it really matter. At age 28 or 29 Piere is no hall of famer. Hell, he isn't even the top CFer in baseball. At best his is an upgrade over what the Cubs had last year, but that isn't saying much. IMO, you don't give up the likes of Pinto for one year of Piere.

 

Doubles show what type of hitter he is. I don't want Slappy in a Cub uniform if it means giving up talent. If Pie rights himself there will be no place to Play Slappy anyway.

 

I won't disagree with you, I'm not crazy about giving up anything decent for him either. But the argument is what can be expected out of him vs Damon, and if Damon would be worth the extra money. Looking at those factors in a vacuum, I don't see how anyone would be willing to shell out very much for Damon. However, looking at the big picture, I'm not crazy about either.

[vance_the_cubs_fan]

According to The Fort Worth Star Telegram, the Rangers have expressed interest in Juan Pierre.

 

The Rangers have told the Marlins they are interested in outfielder Juan Pierre if the Florida fire sale isn't over. It probably isn't, especially in the case with Pierre, who is a five-year arbitration-eligible player who made $3.4 million in base salary in 2005.

 

 

Even more interesting is that the Rangers are considering using Pierre in LF.

 

Pierre, who can be a free agent after next season, played center field for the Marlins but is better suited to left field. That's fine with the Rangers, who are satisfied with Matthews and Nix defensively in center.

 

[MeatampPotatoesMan]

I'd rather have Pierre over Damon just b/c Pierre would be a rental. Only one year of bad D, noodle arm baseball. Damon is a good player now, but over the life of his next contract he is going to be a liability. I'm glad it's not an either/or decision on Damon/Pierre.