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Tuesday, November 29, 2011
How often is an above-average pitcher’s best days behind him?
On XM radio’s MLB channel the other day, the talking heads were discussing Papelbon (right after his signing). One of them asked the question, “Do you think that Papelbon’s best days are behind him?”
Here’s a news flash, and an important statistical concept for you newbies:
For any overall pitching stat, like ERA, FIP, or ERC (component ERA), if a pitcher has been above average for that stat in the past, his better days are always behind him, regardless of his age or experience, assuming that we know nothing else about him. Of course when I say “always,” I mean that our projection for him going forward is always going to be worse than his past performance, using a weighted average of his last 3 years (say, 1, 2, 3 weights) to represent his past performance.
If you don’t believe me, I challenge you to give me any parameters that you think would defy that proclamation, and we’ll test it using historical data.
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