Q. Regarding Sexson, IMO we learned that low contact rate sluggers don’t age well.
::GOLFCLAP::
That is an outstanding hypothesis from which to start. And you can't state a thesis more concisely. :- )
:: DATA FEEDBACK ::
Supposing we went and looked at all of the guys on the career K leaderboards, though --
Reggie, Sosa, Thome, etc. Think we'd find a good number of low contact rate sluggers who made the HOF? ;- )
Well, of course we find a lot of recent players, since HR, K, and BB have all gone way up recently. But as you've guessed,
there were a lot of great hitters -- and great old hitters -- who fanned a whale of a lot.
I realize that isn't exactly contact RATE, but you know as well as I do that a lot of HOF'ers struck out in epic numbers.
If you run an HBT-style, well-controlled study on it, then yes, you are going to see CT% *reflected,* to some extent, in a player's aging patterns.
