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Thursday, April 08, 2010
When do pitchers peak?
I took Rally’s WAR database for all pitchers born between 1926 and 1966. I summed up each pitcher’s WAR by age and each pitcher’s IP by age, and figured that age’s WAR per 9 IP. For example, pitchers aged 24 years old were an average of .070 wins per 9IP above replacement. The best rate was put up by 38 year old pitchers, as they were .095 wins per 9IP. Now, naturally, the ONLY pitchers pitching at that age are the really good ones. So, in addition to knowing the WAR of the surviving pitchers, we need to know how many survivors we’ve had.
The 24-yr olds had 90 thousand innings, while the 38-yr olds had 17 thousand innings. Had I limited my 24 year olds to the best pitchers at that age totalling 17 thousand innings, I’d have had a much better rate than .070 wins per game.
However, what if I find an age that is both higher than 90 thousand innings AND higher than .070 wins per game? Well, then in that case, it’s unambiguous: this age has the higher peak performance. Here’s the data:
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