Probably I’d define elite as a player who has put up 2 or more seasons of 4 WAR or better (or something like that) rather than career numbers. I’d choose to have multiple seasons to help filter out guys who happened to get lucky and have a career year but I’d not want to set it too high so that we lose the guys who might demonstrate the typical fate of the heavy hitter (ie rapid decline).

We’ve seen a few comparisons of how heavy players do vs the general population (and variations on that). What I would like to see is a comparison of elite heavy players vs the elite general population, just to see if the aging curve is the same. But there hasn’t been enough elite heavy players to do the comparison, as I understand.

What this really means is that Fielder is a pretty rare type of player. He carries a lot of weight but he’s an elite hitter. Many suspect that his skills will decline faster than the normal rate because that’s what happens to other heavy hitters.