Does Chris Snyder Eat Puppies For Breakfast?

since I suspect considering a small workload (a plus, by your hypothesis) would be very difficult due to confounding factors in many actual catchers with small workloads — like that at least some of those catchers who don’t have a heavy workload in their 20s tend to be injury-riddled or marginal players to begin with. We would also have smaller sample sizes, not only by restricting it to a subset of all catchers, but also by definition the subset would be those players with fewer PAs in any given year and therefore presumably more chance-driven fluctuation in year-to-year performances.

But otherwise:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=569

The authors’ conclusion is this: “Overall, I don’t view the evidence as a strong trend for a later offensive peak. Perhaps we should abandon the idea of catchers developing more slowly, and recognize that the physical demands of the position will tend to reduce both the length of their peaks and the length of their careers.”

The first table shows that catchers tend to begin their declines earlier and generally experience a bigger decline from age 29 to age 30 than other position players. In fact, apart from two outlier numbers at age 30 (to age 31) and age 33 (to age 34), the trend is quite clear. Those two numbers could be due to statistical randomness and SSS or to attrition at the position resulting from conventional wisdom — i.e., it could be that managers and general managers tend to be very impatient with catchers who show signs of decline at age 30 and age 33 given that the two competing conventions for peak years are 26-29 and 28-32, and catchers who show signs of wear and tear (including slumps) at those ages tend to either change positions or find themselves on the bench. The latter is pure speculation on my part, but the original claim that catchers decline more quickly finds support in the link, which I think counts as “data.”

I think I could also find data that back injuries tend to be more likely to recur than other injuries, if you like. I would count the history of back injury in a catcher as a definite negative.

You aren’t following the thread and seem to have lost sight of the argument in the OP and my argument.

People are evidently wondering why Chris Snyder and $3 million could be had for DJ Carrasco plus a couple of problems. That is the premise of this post. (It is phrased, What gives? Is he eating puppies?)

I said it’s because he’s not that good and he’s a bit overpaid and that this is a swap of marginal guys, not a lopsided trade or steal.

That’s all. I didn’t say that batting averages were all important, but Snyder’s best years (in small samples) have him with an OPS+ less than 105, so he’s basically been an average hitting catcher (someone whose two best years make him an average hitter overall) up to this point. That he can be reasonably expected to decline at his age should be indisputed. (He may not, but odds are that he will.) That his defense has dropped off statistically is a fact. That he has a recent history of back trouble is a fact.

My argument is that there’s no mystery to this trade, and that plainly runs contrary to the premise of the original post — which is that this trade is so one-sided it can’t be rationally explained except by GM stupidity (or eating puppies).

Alderson wouldn’t fetch another GM’s dead puppies at the moment.