Reliability

[the stone]

Apologies if this is covered elsewhere, but I couldn't find it...

How does a player's age factor in the Reliability calculation?

As a example, Jeff Kent has a Reliability score of 75. But he's 38 years old with a recent history of wrist problems. Compare this to 77 score of Bobby Abreu, who is 30 years old and has limited, if any, injury history.

I guess my point is that Jeff Kent "has been" a reliable player. His age, in my opinion, greatly increases the potential that he will be less reliable (i.e. somewhat of a "has been").

Perhaps Abreu has a chance to be a "has been," too, but he falls into an age group that has been determined to be more reliable by HQ stats. I would think he'd be much less likely to fall off the expected level of production than Kent. Yet his score is only 2 points different.

(Not to ramble too much, but is contract status in the Reliability calculation?)

[PD@HQ]

Contract status isn't, age is. Also track record volatility/variability over the previous three seasons. I don't have my Forecaster handy but it's explained pretty thoroughly there.

[AllenH]

Kent's production has been amazingly constant (especially when you factor in he's done this for 3 different teams in 3 different home parks over that stretch).

Looking at the last 5 years, only his HR have had any variability (low of 22 - twice, high of 37; 27 and 29 HR the other 2 years).
SB +/- 2 (5-7 SB each and every year).
BA: 298, 313, 297, 289, 289 - doesn't get much steadier than that.
RBI: 106, 108, 93, 107, 105. The man's a machine.

That has to be a factor in reliability - those are such solid numbers (at an age when a decline would be expected).

[the stone]

I was also thinking that the projections for Kent this year were lower than his historical levels, which makes sense to me. Abreu is projected to perform at the same level as his recent history would suggest, which also makes sense to me.

[Tom_T]

Kent's production has been amazingly constant (especially when you factor in he's done this for 3 different teams in 3 different home parks over that stretch).

Looking at the last 5 years, only his HR have had any variability (low of 22 - twice, high of 37; 27 and 29 HR the other 2 years).
SB +/- 2 (5-7 SB each and every year).
BA: 298, 313, 297, 289, 289 - doesn't get much steadier than that.
RBI: 106, 108, 93, 107, 105. The man's a machine.

That has to be a factor in reliability - those are such solid numbers (at an age when a decline would be expected).

It's a tough call. Is Kent going to put up 25 HR and 100 RBI until the day he retires? Probably not. So what year does one project the numbers to weaken?