I'm new to the blogosphere, and have been touring the baseball sites since the off-season trading began.  I have found Viva El Birdos to be the "Best of the Birds", and the off-season has been far more interesting for it.  I really appreciate the statistically based leads of lboros, and the many intelligent and good spirited follow-on comments that also make it the most active.  Enough praise then; I thought it necessary to provide a reasonable hypothesis for discussion before just jumping on the rest.  So here it goes:

Despite the many statistics that can be used to chart careers, and so many different career tracks from single season wonders, to late bloomers, and steady perennial producers, there is no real tracking of the term "career year."  Furthermore, among the undocumented intangibles of a winning clubhouse, is the notion that championships come to the team that had some miraculous coincidence of several "career years" which may include an intriguing combination of core stars, revitalized veterans, and surprising rookies.

Determination of a "career year" is not as obvious as first thought, and for the intent here it serves to use a very liberal judgment that allows for any individual to have multiple career years.  This is due in part for consideration that a rookie season may be particularly inspiring to the team of that season, although subsequently eclipsed by either improved averages or total output in a later year.  The positive influence of that rookie season can not be diminished by a future performance to be judged independently year-by-year.  Likewise, even a season that is somewhat less than absolute peak, can still be considered a career year if it adequately meets the expectations as reasonably indicative of that player's performance, or still achieves league leading levels of performance.  For example, a season with 100 RBI's could be considered a career year for anybody, even for someone that once had as many as 140.

Alternatively, a player that repeated with great stat averages, but missed too many games to injury that significantly reduced their accrued output, clearly doesn't qualify.  Also, a rookie that clearly disappointed with unacceptably low standards by any measure does not qualify either.  The judgment is most difficult to make for pitchers that have had their role changed from starter to mid-relief.  In this context, there must still be the possibility to provide a career year perhaps by an exceptionally low era, despite not having the innings or wins to match earlier career performances, thereby accounting for the revised role and achievement in that capacity.

Undaunted by all the caveats, I started by looking through the records of the Yankees from their three successive championships ('98-'00) and including three successive 100 win seasons ('02-'04).  I also checked the other championship teams since, plus the Cardinals of the last three years.  Lastly, I tried to make some plausible projections for the Cards of '06.

While counting the number of players that could be credited with "Career Year" status, it is clear that the mix of what roles these players have must be considered.  Using individual salaries as a way to pro-rate their respective value, and to test the notion of whether or not the "money players" were producing, I then summed the salary of the CY Players and calculated the percentage of total salary of the club.  I used the roster and salary listings from Baseball-Reference.com and thank Viva El Birdos again for sponsorship of pages there.

Below is a graph of just the player count.  (Well the graph couldn't be inserted for some technical reason, and I can't get the table to tab correctly.)

Career Year Tracker by Player Count                                       
        2006    2005    2004    2003    2002    2001    2000    1999    1998    Avg.

Yanks            6    8    13    13    11    11    12    17   
BoSox            4    12                           
ChiSox        12                               
Marlins                17                       
Angels                        15                   
Dbacks                        10               
Cards        11    13    13    8                       
Cards +    13                                   
Cards ++    14                                   
WS Champ        12    12    17    15    10    11    12    17    13.3

By my judgment, all championship teams from '98-'05 had at least 10 players recording "career years" and the average was above 13.  The Yanks of '98 and the surprising Marlins of '03 hit the peak of 17 players.  The drop-off of the Yanks of the last two seasons, and the precipitous fall of the Bosox in one season is also evident.  The Cards looked expectedly formidable by this measure, with 13 players accorded career year status for each of the last two years, but there is clearly a basis of doubt for the forthcoming season.

Moreover, the Cards ranking is diluted relative to other teams when the curves are plotted according to Salary percentage of Career Years.  As we have witnessed, the Cards have been able to get very good performances from among the lesser paid.  When converted to percentages, the above championship teams averaged above 60% of the salary going to players having career years.  The upside was again lead by the Marlins of '03 and also the Angels of '02 at a staggering 79%, and the anomaly on the low side was attributed to the DBacks of '01 at only 42%.  The Yanks have proved to be incredibly consistent at getting career years from the top of the salary pool until the drop-off of the last two years.  But the Cards only just got up to 42% and 43% for the last two years, and may have a high probability for seeing this decline in `06.  On the other hand, the magical season that includes a couple more money players recording career years, could put them over the top.

Below is the graph, or table of Career Year by percentage of club salary.

Career Year Tracker by Percentage of Club Salary                                       
        2006    2005    2004    2003    2002    2001    2000    1999    1998    Avg.

Yanks            40%    43%    64%    68%    65%    58%    58%    69%   
BoSox            7%    50%                           
ChiSox        57%                               
Marlins                79%                       
Angels                        79%                   
Dbacks                        42%               
Cards        32%    43%    42%    37%                       
Cards +    48%                                   
Cards ++    60%                                   
WS Champ        57%    50%    79%    79%    42%    58%    58%    69%    61%

So who are we talking about, and what does anybody else think.  For the Cards of '05, counting from the top, I attributed career years to Pujols, Edmonds, Izzy, then Suppan, Eck, & Carp, followed by Nunez, and then the last six on the salary totem pole of Taguchi, Reyes, Molina, Flores, Luna, and J-Rod.  That's just 4 of the top 10, plus 6 of the last 6, with 3 in the middle.

For the Card's of '06, it is easier to start from the bottom, and I think it's a fair bet that we get another five in a row at the bottom from An. Reyes, J-Rod, Mateo, Thompson, and Luna.  If Hector can find his bat, I think he beats Miles out for the spot, and his versatility gets him more playing time for an upside year.  Moving up in the money, but not far, Molina is a sure thing for a career year.  After that, I thought for the basis of the exercise, and maybe with just some hope that they do play to best of their respective careers, I put both newcomers Bigbie and Spivey in for career years.  In a similar vein, I think it's fair to believe that Jaun Enc, can at least match his best, and even Looper could get comfortable and put in a great year in the role of mid-relief.  If to that crowd I add the steadies of Eck and Pujols, the list is up to 11 players.

Unfortunately, that is only 32% of the salary, and means that I didn't tap any of the 2 thru 8 salaries for career years.   Of that group, we could all make some good guesses, and a lot more wishful thinking.  Thanks to Hummingbird for his great piece on Edmonds.  My great fear is that jed of '06 may end up too much like Sanders or Walker of '05, so I couldn't count him in.  The extended power alleys may mean less wall-jumping saves, and more DL Dives.  Rolen for full recovery and career level production may be too much wishful thinking as well.  The next five salaries are all hurlers, and it's also hard to guess from that group.

While I may not be as hard on Mulder as some, it will now be five years since his career year of '01, and from the trend documented by others, there seams little chance to peg him for one now.  Marquis is literally the wild-card, and somehow it seams too much to ask Sup to again be every bit as good or better than his previous year.  That leaves Carp and Izzy, who for me stand the best chance of notching another solid season.  Adding them gets the number up to 13 players, and the salary percentage up to 48%, corresponding with Cards + on the charts.

Despite all that, which many would say is already asking way too much, it may still not qualify as championship caliber.  Something less may leave more room for clubhouse grumbling than over achieving satisfaction.  This takes me back to reconsider either Edmonds or Rolen.  If just one of those two could do it again, and more likely it might be Scotty, the salary percentage jumps to 60% for a total of 14 players, corresponding with Cards ++.  If that group were actually all on their respective games, there would no doubt be a lot of joy in Mudville.  There would even be some allowance for some of those lesser salaried players to not rise to the list, and it wouldn't make any one feel too down trodden.  The intangibles in this is the feel of the clubhouse when that much is performing well, and the extent that it's not bemoaning the injuries, or the lost stroke, or lost velocity of some.  Not every one can have a great year, but championship teams are made of an often surprising confluence of career years.

Jockety has assembled a team with a good possibility for putting together a magical season, and TLR and Dunc are proven at being able to extract the best from many.  The hard part is guessing who that's going to be.  Clearly, even if each of the newcomers have career years, it will take more of the top end of the staff playing well for a full season than has happened each of the last two years.  It could be interesting just to try to set up a pole, letting us readers and participants assign a career year or not for each of the players.  Moreover, I think we're all dying to get to ST to get a first glimpse of how this might look.  It would be interesting to do the same poll before and after ST.

I enjoyed wasting a lot of time on this, and at the least hope this was interesting for some of you, and potentially corroborating bs for a like minded few.  I'd be happy to email the graphs for inclusion if I knew where to send them.