Rangers Get Older But Not Necessarily Wiser

By Dan Schlossberg

In baseball, age is a matter of mind. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

Maybe that’s why the Texas Rangers agreed to a minor-league contract with 38-year-old pitcher Johnny Cueto.

Once a standout, he brings 16 years of experience to the table. And he’s actually younger than Max Scherzer, another fading star who spent the start of the 2024 season on the sidelines.

Jacob deGrom is yet another erstwhile but aging ace recovering from injury — Tommy John elbow injury in his case. He’s a relative spring chicken at 35, an age when most pitchers not named Nolan Ryan or Phil Niekro start thinking about hanging up their spikes.

Only a handful of players, most of them pitchers, celebrate their 40th birthdays in major-league uniforms.

Justin Verlander, 41, is the oldest active player.Photo byWikimedia

The oldest active player is Houston starter Justin Verlander, who turned 41 in February. Right behind him are Atlanta right-handers Charlie Morton, a starter likely in his last season, and Jesse Chavez, a reliever who has already announced this year is his last.

Adam Wainwright and Zack Greinke creeked to the finish line at 40 last year, with the former retiring and the latter unable to find a team willing to meet his exorbitant salary demands.

A Cy Young Award recipient in 2009, Greinke is 21 strikeouts short of becoming the 20th pitcher with 3,000 strikeouts. In fact, he has the most strikeouts of any pitcher below the 3,000-strikeout mark, with Clayton Kershaw next at 2,944.

But who would want a pitcher who went 2-15 with a 5.06 ERA last season? Even the Kansas City Royals didn’t try to keep him — and are rising in the standings now that he’s gone.

Nor did anyone sign 44-year-old Rich Hill, living proof that it’s impossible to last forever — even if you are left-handed.

Thanks to their knuckleballs, Niekro and fellow Hall of Famer Hoyt Wilhelm almost made it to age 50. But the game is getting younger and less tolerant of graybeards commanding seven-figure salaries.

Even Warren Spahn, who won more games than any left-hander and more games than any pitcher after World War II, eventually had to concede to Father Time. He ran out of gas overnight, suddenly finished after going 23-7 at age 42.

Position players rarely reach their 40s, as the rigors of playing every day are too much. That’s why Nelson Cruz is no longer in the majors, not to mention Julio Franco.

Jack Benny may have been 39 forever but he didn’t play ball — only the violin.

Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is the author of Home Run King: the Remarkable Record of Hank Aaron [Sports Publishing, $32.95] and 40 other baseball books. He covers the game for forbes.com and MLBReport.com, among others. E.mail him at ballauthor@gmail.com.