Repository for the paper Filling in the Gaps: A Multiple Imputation Approach to Estimating Aging Curves in Baseball
In sports, an aging curve depicts the relationship between average performance and age in athletes’ careers. This paper studies the aging curves in baseball with a missing data approach. We use a hierarchical multiple imputation model to impute the player performance associated with the missing seasons, and construct the aging curves based on the imputed datasets. We evaluate the effects of different dropout mechanisms on the aging curves through simulation, before applying our method to real data. Results suggest an overestimation of the aging curves when the unobserved seasons are not considered, whereas a better estimate is achieved with imputation