Memories of Javy Baez

[Ceetar]

One example I can remember is that Willie Mays had a lifetime OBP that was .002 lower than his OBP at age 24, which was odd because Mays had some of his highest OBPs after age 40. I would have expected that his OBP would go up as he aged but it fell a bit.

well OBP is gonna factor in batted ball luck. You want to look more at BB%. Mays for his career was 11.7% And most of his seasons were pretty much around there. '71 and '72 saw steep increases though, but perhaps that a late career "stop swinging as much" stance of some sort. But anyway, his "Best" years were '65, '64 '62 and '54, and his BB% there 11.9, 12.3, 11 and 10.3. All pretty much around that 11.7% career mark.



Also the elites like May are always going to be outliers.



You want to talk about modern guys that have made their OBP/walk rate jump? You want to talk about Starling Marte. Career 5.3 BB%. 2021? 8.2. His BB/K ratio SIGNIFICANTLY better in 2021 than any other year.



https://blogs.fangraphs.com/starling-marte-is-not-swinging-like-never-before/https://blogs.fangraphs.com/starling-marte-is-not-swinging-like-never-before/



Some analysis there that suggests that Marte's increase isn't just all smoke and mirrors either.





But yeah, for the most part, players don't randomly develop better/different skills. You have a good eye or you don't. The flip side is a guy like Matt Harvey, who has pretty poor control, and once he couldn't fake it with plus velocity, it became very clear he didn't have that additional skill to be elite without it.

[Edgy MD]

=roger_that post_id=82208 time=1638319296 user_id=128]
Don't remember where I saw it, but I think it was so universal you could probably do a quick and dirty study yourself. Just take someone with a full career, and use baseball-reference to compute his OBP after his third full year. Compare that to his career OBP and it will be very close. Almost no one showed significant growth, and that was always when the league OBP went up. Basically, this study showed me that a player's OBP at 25 is his lifetime OBP.

[roger_that]

It wasn't a study of one; it was of a whole decade of players, as I recall. But I was inviting you to try the method. You'll find that the vast majority of players show almost no improvement in their OBP past age 25 or so, which is the earliest point that they could show a significant sample size. The figure that sticks in my head is .012 BP points on average, which is a rounding error. Many players post-age 25 OBPs decline, about a quarter to a third, as I recall. I cited Mays as an example because i knew for a fact that his post-age-40 OBP went up, but there was too much decline built in overall for him to be the counter-example I was expecting him to be.



Since I don't have the study handy (it was on some stats site, of which I subscribe to several, and it was at least a year ago), I'll have to settle for stating that I think anyone who think Baez is capable of improving his OBP from here on in is thinking wishfully, not realistically.

[roger_that]

According to this https://sny.tv/articles/javier-baez-mets-what-happened?fbclid=IwAR22YLI3Yr8W8AJl4hcxC7L1-cqfJoi6Ha7NdKYPKPI6zsBiaoMVtfepFhAhttps://sny.tv/articles/javier-baez-mets-what-happened?fbclid=IwAR22YLI3Yr8W8AJl4hcxC7L1-cqfJoi6Ha7NdKYPKPI6zsBiaoMVtfepFhA , the Marte deal blew up signing Baez.

[TransMonk]

Javy's opt-out is in just two years...when Cano comes off the Mets' books. Hmmm...



I wasn't all that excited when he was acquired and I'm not that disappointed that he's leaving for Detroit.