Hit Your Age!

So I was thinking yesterday, you know how when a player is hitting very poorly, they say he's "not hitting his weight." That is, his batting average is lower than his weight. Well I was wondering, what's the opposite of that. Obviously, having a batting average higher than your weight isn't really that great an accomplishment (unless you're Cecil Fielder or Matt Stairs). So then I thought, what about hitting your age? As in, your yearly homer run total is higher than your age.

Of course, this implies you're a power hitter to some extent, you won't find any Jason Tyner types on this list. However, it seems to me that a list of the Age All Stars would represent some of the best players in the league. So, without further ado, here's last year's Age All Stars:

Grady Sizemore, age 24, 28 HR in 2006. What can you say? Grady is a stud and figures to be in the discussion for best AL centerfielder for at least the next 10 years.

Joe Crede, age 28, 30 HR. He finally put it all together in '06 after having been in the majors for several years. His chronic back problems didn't really bother him in '06, unfortunately, this may have been a career year.

Torii Hunter, age 31, 31 HR. He'll likely get paid pretty hansomely for it after the '07 season.

Vernon Wells, age 28, 32 HR. And for this he got a 126 mill. contract.

Vlad Guerrero, age 31, 33 HR. One would think that Vladdy has been an Age All Star pretty much since he broke into the league.

Mark Texeira, age 26, 33 HR. Tex had an even better year in 2005 as a 25 year old socking 43 HR.

Justin Morneau, age 25, 34 HR. This plus 130 RBI wins you the MVP.

Richie Sexson, age 32, 34 HR. No offense to Richie, who had a decent year in 2006, but he drags this list down.

Alex Rodriguez, age 31, 35 HR. Still an age All Star in a down year for him.

Paul Konerko, age 31, 35 HR. Well worth his new contract.

Manny Ramirez, age 34, 35 HR. Barely makes the list, due to a nagging knee injury that limited him in September.

Nick Swisher, age 26, 35 HR. A big jump up in power for Swish, who seems to have come into his own in 2006.

Jason Giambi, age 36, 37 HR. The Giambino isn't young, but he can still hit it out of the ballpark.

Troy Glaus, age 30, 38 HR. A bit of an under the radar member of the Age All Stars.

Frank Thomas, age38, 39 HR. The first time the Big Hurt has been a Age All Star in quite some time.

Travis Hafner, age 29, 42 HR. Pronk had a monster year, but is older than you might think.

Jim Thome, age 36, 42 HR. Thome just keeps on putting up seasons like this.

Jermaine Dye, age 33, 44 HR. Perhaps the most surprising member of the 2006 Age All Stars. Dye actually just missed out in 2005 (31 HR at age 32).

David Ortiz, age 31, 54 HR. Unsurprisingly, Big Papi tops our list.

There you have it, 19 guys managed to "Hit their age" in 2006. Preparing this raised a few interesting questions. Perhaps I'll dig into this more from a historical perspective. A step I could take later on down the road would be to compile a list of the number of seasons a player has been an Age All Star. Another further step I might take is to calculate the number of HR in excess of one's age a player hits. This would give you a cummulative total for their career, in seasons where they hit their age. This might be a decent way to measure peak value, or at least peak power. If I did come up with a list of career HRs in excess of age, I bet ARod would come out the leader (or maybe Griffey or that Ruth guy).