Major League Baseball Is Increasingly a Young Man's Game

By Benjamin Chase

When first baseman Yuli Gurriel made his season debut on September 1 for the Kansas City Royals, he became the first hitter aged 40 or older to play in the majors this season. That struck up a question...are we turning the game over to the kids?

Looking at the numbers this season, zero hitters or pitchers over 40 will qualify for ERA or batting average competition this year. Only five total players over 40 have appeared in a major league game this season. Rich Hill is the elder of the group at 44, with 41-year-old Justin Verlander and three 40-year-old players, Gurriel, Jesse Chavez, and Charlie Morton.

Interestingly, until a late-August trade to Kansas City, Chavez, Morton, and Gurriel were all part of the Atlanta Braves organization this season.

By contrast, this season, there have already been 36 qualified hitters who are 25 or younger. Overall, 350 players aged 25 or younger have appeared in a game this season.

How does this compare to recent seasons?

To compare, we can look back by decade.

In 2014, one hitter (Derek Jeter) and one pitcher (Bartolo Colon) had qualified seasons and a total of seven players aged 40 or older appeared in a Major League Baseball game.

By comparison, 27 hitters aged 25 or younger qualified in 2014 with 383 players that young appearing in MLB.

Going back 20 years, in 2004, the best pitcher and hitter in the league were 35+, with 40-year-old Randy Johnson sporting a 8.4 bWAR to lead pitchers and 39-year-old Barry Bonds topping bWAR for hitters with a 10.6 mark. That season saw four pitchers qualify for the ERA title and one hitter qualify for the batting title who were 40 years old or older.

Randy Johnson wins his 300th game on Junev4, 2009 at Nationals ParkPhoto byWikimedia Commons

The overall number of qualified hitters (21) and players who appeared in a game (331) among those who were 25 or younger in 2004 were both notably lower, with qualified hitters who were 25 or younger 71% lower than those who have already qualified this year with three weeks left in the season.

So what could potentially lead to this change over time?

To be blunt, money.

In 2004, the very early throws of Moneyball were taking hold across the league, and teams were looking to maximize effectiveness of both their entire roster and their budgets. The simple fact is that a guy like Gurriel making the prorated minimum salary is going to cost a team a few hundred thousand dollars, but even factoring that in, the five players over 40 in the majors this year make an average of $8.8 million.

The average of the top five 25-and-under players in salary is $11.6 million. However, for $8.8 million, the 40+ players have produced an average of 0.3 bWAR, or approximately $29 million per bWAR. The five players who are 25 and under, two of whom have reached contract extensions and two of whom are in arbitration, are some of the elite players in the game in 2024 - and they're earning $3.1 million on average per bWAR.

The next five players 25 and under that are on the bWAR list include four players making the minimum salary in 2024. That is really where the rubber meets the road. Veterans have the experience to push for higher salaries and negotiate higher salary and their team of choice. Those next five players are still within MLB's arbitration system, putting them under team control at very reasonable cost compared to their talent output.

For better or worse, we're much more likely to see short-term appearances by 40-year-old players in modern baseball over a replay of the 2004 season, where four pitchers over 40 made 30 or more starts.

Benjamin Chase is one of the co-editors of the Here's the Pitch newsletter. His day job is a reporter in rural South Dakota and he writes for his own Medium site, Chasing Baseball Greatness, and is the co-host of the Pallazzo Podcast weekly prospect show. You can find him on most social media networks under the handle @biggentleben.