Anatomy of a good pick – Age
This is the first of a series of posts about what makes a good pick. In each post I’ll check how good picks and bad picks fare in a given feature.
Just two notes before beginning. First, I’ll only consider players picked from the 2nd cycle on, because the rule about scout score was different in the 1st cycle, so the criterion to judge whether a pick was good or not was different. Starting from the 2nd cycle, the criterion is simple: did he score more than 8 points?
…At least, it is simple when you consider things ex post. I mean, one could argue that some players that will never reach 8 points were good picks when they were picked, because they had the potential to score many points (this, of course, was the second note).
The first feature I’ll consider is the player’s age when he was picked.
I’ll consider the 30 players with the best predicted score (AKA “Good Picks”) and compare them to the 18 players with a predicted score of less than 8 (AKA “Bad Picks”). See the appendix for the names of these players.
The average age of the Good Picks is 20.5 years. The average age of bad picks is 25.6 years.
Among the Good Picks, only Debuchy was picked when he was older than 25.6. Among the Bad Picks, no player were picked when he was younger than 20.5; the younger Bad Pick was Jucilei, at 22.55.
Consider that many players that (a) were young when they were picked and that (b) will be bad picks in the end are still too young for the prediction formula to claim that they have no hope anymore. This said… it looks like one should think twice before picking a player who is 24 or older!
Appendix
30 best picks: right now they are (from best to “less best”) Schurrle (58 points), Gotze, Giroud, David Luiz, Pogba, Paulinho, Rojo, Depay, Lucas Moura, Blind, Alba, Luiz Gustavo, Varane, Reus, Bernard, Sterling, Griezmann, Koke, Barkley, Debuchy, Draxler, Henderson, Chamberlain, De Sciglio, Koscielny, Lamela, Smalling, Clasie, Digne, Willems (37 points).
Players with a predicted score of 7 or less (from worst to “less worst”): Antonini, Jose Enrique, Mulder, Scocco, Valero, Bruno Cortes, Molinaro, N’Zogbia, Ansaldi, Forlin, Marchesin, Michu, Antonelli, Garcia, Matri, Jadson, Jucilei, Tomkins.
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