![]() ![]() Some methodology, should you be interested or wish to confirm my results: I used Sean Lahman’s player database to extract career lengths for more than 10,000 players, and I limited my sample to careers beginning post-1900. I was inspired to look into this by the collection of heuristics on the subject I have seen repeated in baseball circles: that second basemen and catchers fall off in their early 30s, and that first basemen last longer. The first factor I wanted to investigate was how career lengths might differ depending on the dominant position a player fielded. The analysis is therefore somewhat macabre, if also (and more importantly) technically accurate. This kind of model was built specifically to estimate how survival varies as a function of different medical treatments it’s the kind of tool medical researchers use to understand whether patients on a drug live longer than those given a placebo. To overcome these obstacles, I’ll employ a special type of regression model called a Cox Proportional Hazards Model. After Halladay’s magnificent 2011 (arguably the best season of his illustrious career), and his relatively healthy history to that point, who could have foreseen that a string of seemingly innocuous strains would bring about the end of his career?īecause of the randomness of injuries and the overarching shadow of survivor bias, studying career length is a statistically thorny issue. One twisted swing of the bat or one wrong pitch can cause catastrophic, career-destroying damage. ![]() We usually view the question of when a given player’s career will end as largely unforeseeable. Even when a player does remain employed late into his 30s, between injuries and the tireless decline of aging, the terminal years of his career can be unproductive. Owing to the advanced age at which many players are hitting the market, for many free agent contracts there is substantial risk that a player’s useful career will end before his deal does. The question of career length has more than emotional import within the business of baseball. Mike Trout, Bryce Harper), another trails off gently into retirement. It’s a bittersweet fact of the big leagues that just as one generation of transcendent superstars is born (e.g. Together with Roy Halladay’s somewhat quieter conference and Mariano Rivera’s farewell tour, a trio of players I admired tremendously will soon be out of baseball. Like many baseball fans, I was taken aback by Derek Jeter’s declaration of his impending retirement.
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