Apparently Bryant Gumble and doesn’t know how to look up a player in baseball-reference. Well he shouldn’t worry about that because I’ll do it for him:
| Jeff Bagwell | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Age | Tm | Lg | G | PA | HR | SLG | OPS |
| 1991 | 23 | HOU | NL | 156 | 650 | 15 | .437 | .824 |
| 1992 | 24 | HOU | NL | 162 | 697 | 18 | .444 | .812 |
| 1993 | 25 | HOU | NL | 142 | 609 | 20 | .516 | .903 |
| 1994 | 26 | HOU | NL | 110 | 479 | 39 | .750 | 1.201 |
| 1995 | 27 | HOU | NL | 114 | 539 | 21 | .496 | .894 |
| 1996 | 28 | HOU | NL | 162 | 719 | 31 | .570 | 1.021 |
| 1997 | 29 | HOU | NL | 162 | 717 | 43 | .592 | 1.017 |
| 1998 | 30 | HOU | NL | 147 | 661 | 34 | .557 | .981 |
| 1999 | 31 | HOU | NL | 162 | 729 | 42 | .591 | 1.045 |
| 2000 | 32 | HOU | NL | 159 | 719 | 47 | .615 | 1.039 |
| 2001 | 33 | HOU | NL | 161 | 717 | 39 | .568 | .966 |
| 2002 | 34 | HOU | NL | 158 | 691 | 31 | .518 | .919 |
| 2003 | 35 | HOU | NL | 160 | 702 | 39 | .524 | .897 |
| 2004 | 36 | HOU | NL | 156 | 679 | 27 | .465 | .842 |
| 2005 | 37 | HOU | NL | 39 | 123 | 3 | .380 | .738 |
That sure doesn’t look like Bagwell went from hitting homers to a power outage overnight to my untrained eye. Forgetting the arthritis condition that Bagwell had is a pretty big memory wipe as well since it by all accounts turned him into a Giambi-esque firstbaseman after being quite good. As you grow older things like arthritis become worse, and baseball skills (like hitting for power!!!) decline. To put it simply: Injury + age = decline.
I mean really it takes three seconds to look at that table and come to the conclusion that he was in a decline phase after 1999-2000 rather than experiencing a “power outage”.
But hey I’m not the professional so maybe I’m making this all up.
