Estimated Age Effects in Baseball

Ray Fair ()

No 1536, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University

Abstract: Age effects in baseball are estimated in this paper using a nonlinear fixed-effects regression. The sample consists of all players who have played 10 or more "full-time" years in the major leagues between 1921 and 2004. Quadratic improvement is assumed up to a peak-performance age, which is estimated, and then quadratic decline after that, where the two quadratics need not be the same. Each player has his own constant term. The results show that aging effects are larger for pitchers than for batters and larger for baseball than for track and field, running, and swimming events and for chess. There is some evidence that decline rates in baseball have decreased slightly in the more recent period, but they are still generally larger than those for the other events. There are 18 batters out of the sample of 441 whose performances in the second half of their careers noticeably exceed what the model predicts they should have been. All but 3 of these players played from 1990 on. The estimates from the fixed-effects regressions can also be used to rank players. This ranking differs from the ranking using lifetime averages because it adjusts for the different ages at which players played. It is in effect an age-adjusted ranking.

Keywords: Aging; Baseball performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C2 J00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2005-10, Revised 2007-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
Note: CFP 1255.
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports (2008), 4(1): Article 1

Downloads: (external link)
https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d15/d1536.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
Journal Article: Estimated Age Effects in Baseball (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1536

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Cowles Foundation, Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA
The price is None.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Brittany Ladd ().