Baseball Musings: Late Bloomer Burnout?

March 21, 2006

Late Bloomer Burnout?

A rule of thumb I use is that if a player gets 2000 plate appearances before he's 24 (seasonal age), he's likely to be a very good player and the odds of him being a Hall of Famer go way up. I've never explored the opposite; is a player who comes up in his late 20's likely to burn out sooner?

Junior Spivey is providing some anecdotal evidence. He didn't make the majors until he was 26, had a fine year at 27, and it's been down hill ever since. His strikeouts are going up. He struck out 21% of the time in 2004, 32% of the time in 2005 and 38% of the time this spring. The signs are not encouraging for the Cardinals.

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Posted by David Pinto at 09:11 AM | Spring Training | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Any other players besides Spivey? Podsednik? Maybe it's not burnout. Maybe it's just one season of playing over his head that got him a reputation as a good player, but in reality, he's just a poor-to-mediocre player. There's gotta be a reason why he didn't make it to the majors until he was 26. He probably just was never all that good.

Posted by: sabernar at March 21, 2006 10:12 AM

I've always found these discussions to really be a self-fullfilling prophesy. Unless there is some mitigating factor (college, great player blocking you in a system, discrimination prior to integration, etc), a great player will usually plow through a minor league system at a faster rate than a good or average player. If you make it to the majors at age 21 it means you have likely skipped a minor league level because you weren't being challenged sufficiently. Conversely, a player who has to repeat a level in the minors is likely to have a shorter major league career.

Posted by: LargeBill at March 21, 2006 10:44 AM

It's not exactly been downhill ever since, he was much better (and he struck out less often) in 2004 than he was in 2003. More like "It's been downhill between 2004 and 2005 and the same sampling of at-bats in which Emil Brown hit .400 a few years back"

Posted by: danup at March 21, 2006 01:38 PM

Seems interesting enough, any similar type information for young pitchers?

Posted by: Bedhead138 at March 21, 2006 02:21 PM

How about the classic example - Bob Hamelin. Rookie of the year at age 27, never did a thing after. Of course, in the opposite vein there's Steve Avery, who was allw ashed up at 27.

Posted by: david at March 21, 2006 06:22 PM

Of course, injuries played a role with Avery. In any case, I suspect that it works a little bit differently with pitchers, simply because of the greater injury risk.

Posted by: calig23 at March 21, 2006 08:02 PM

If my memory serves me, pitchers tend to have their peak at a slightly later age than hitters do, which would make the comparison all the more interesting to see.

Posted by: Mike lafser at March 21, 2006 11:05 PM

A bit part of Spivey's late debut was a pretty severe leg injury that cost him nearly 2 full seasons in the minors. Add that layaway to the development cycle of a guy who admits that his focus was basketball-first prior to being drafted and you have the reasons why he debuted "late." Raw, late draftee (38th rounder) with injury problems along the way.

An interesting thought about burnout, but perhaps not the best example. Junior's a remarkable guy, but I'd say his standout season was not so grand after revisiting it.

Posted by: Aaron at March 21, 2006 11:10 PM

In general, if you view careers as curves with a peak around age 27, it is only natural that someone who reaches big-league quality late will regress into sub-big-league quality sooner. Mauna Kea in Hawaii is of comparable size to Everest, but most of it is underwater. Late bloomers like Hamelin and Chris Sabo scale Mauna Kea from the base, only coming up to sea (ML) level after their journeys are almost half-over, and disappearing back under it soon after.

Guys like Ruth or Mantle or Pujols, though, already start at or above sea level, and that is why they are able to go as high in their careers as they do.

Posted by: Nathan at March 22, 2006 02:16 AM

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