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A look at the ghost of Albert's future (courtesy of Tom Boswell from the Wash Post a few days ago)
Charting the careers of baseball's best 15 hitters (as per career OPS+): Ruth, Williams, Cobb, Gehrig, Hornsby, Mantle, Musial, Foxx, Thomas, Mays, Aaron, DiMaggio, Ott, Frank Robinson, and Manny Ramirez
- That group turns out to average through their age 31 season an OPS+ of 170 and 1,612 games played
- By a nice coincidence Pujols, now that he's through his age 31 season, sits with an OPS+ of 170 and 1,705 games (Boz also notes that if you take away military service for several of the early group they also would have averaged right about 1,700 games each)
So the bottom line is that Albert prior to age 32 was almost identical to the average of the all-time best 15 hitters at the same point in their careers.
So what happened next?
- Well, an OPS+ of 154 for the composite group starting with the year they turned 32 ... down a bit more than 9% from the first portion of their careers although still quite good
- But the problem comes with the next figure which showed them averaging only 944 games played from age 32 to the end of their career.
IOW, they collectively hit about 90% as well but for less than 60% as long/often.
Now there is lots of variation among that group and it's impossible to tell where Pujols will fall ... but of course a large part of the problem with a lengthy contract at his age is that you don't know at what part of the spectrum he'll fall.
* Ruth was fairly consistent until near the end. 1st half 212 OPS+ (Two Fuckin' Twelve folks!!) with 1,350 games played vs a still-great 199 and 1,153 starting at age 32, although in his case his 1st half numbers were kept down by him being a part-time player while on the mound.
* Musial also played nearly as many games after turning 32 (1,502) as he did before (1,524) while seeing his OPS+ fall only from 172 to 144
* Mays, like Musial, played a long time and generally stayed healthy and productive: 159/1,534 per vs 151/1,453 (here's the part where the sports-writer puts in the line about how embarrassing he looked in the '73 WS)
And while it could be argued that a couple guys, for varying reasons, really brought the average way down ...
* Gehrig: 1,538 games played vs 626 after age 31 (for obvious reasons)
* Foxx: 1,834 vs 483 (he drank ... a lot)
* DiMaggio: 1,111 vs 625 (various injuries)
* Ott: 2,015 to 715 and Hornsby: 1,689 to 570 (not quite sure of the details for those two)
... Babe, Ted & Willie, along with Aaron (1,806 to 1,492) were still the only ones whose 2nd half games played were within 25% of where they were in their 1st.
Mantle: 1,740 to 661
Thomas: 1,371 to 951
Robinson: 1,786 to 1,022
Manny: 1,612 to 944
Williams: 1,273 vs 828 (he had a military call-up during in both halves of his career)
Cobb: 1,805 to 1,229
IOW, Good luck Angels, you just may need it.
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