Old Players in Recent Years

Is it my imagination, or are more players excelling into their mid-40's these days than before? I decided to check; found I'm not imagining it. Last year there was a 48-year old (the ageless Julio Franco, by my research the oldest regular (not novelty or emergency replacement) roster position player in the 133-year history of the big leagues. Two regular pitchers that exceeded him, that I know of, were Jack Quinn and Hoyt Wilhelm). Last year there also were three pitchers at 44 (Clemens, Moyer, and Wells) and four guys (all but Bonds a pitcher) 43. This compares to ten years earlier (1997) when there was one 43, two 42 and two 41-year olds.

Most impressive is that 44-year old class of last year. There were six (add Fassero, Mulholland, and Borders) of that cohort still playing at 42 and 5 (minus Borders)at 43. It appears that Moyer is the one representative of that class still going at 45.

In the last 20 years, Jilio Franco is the oldest at 48. The next 4 oldest in that time(46) are all pitchers: Tommy John, Nolan Ryan, Charlie Hough and Jesse Orosco. Catcher Carlton Fisk joins Moyer as playing at age 45, and 44 includes Rickey Henderson as well as pitchers John Franco, Clemens and Wells. The next two oldest position players in that time were Dave Winfield and Andres Galarraga, each 43.

So, in that 20-year period, only 4 position players other than Julio Franco played to age 43; Julio played on past that another five years!

Also, only 11 plyers in those 20 years played to age 44; three of them (Clemens, Moyer and Wells) reached that age in the same cohort last year.

As for youngest players in those 20 years? Only A-Rod (in 1994) played at age 18; among those playing at 19 were Griffey, Jr., Juan Gonzalez, Ivan Rodriquez, Andruw Jones, Rick Ankiel (as a pitcher) and a dozen or so other guys, a large portion of them foreign-born, and most of the pitchers among them failing to go on to a memorable or lengthy career. Interesting that of the last three players age 19, tow of them are brothers B.J. (in 2003) and Justin (last year) Upton; they are also, amazingly enough, by my figuring, the only two American-born, non-pitching 19-year olds in the majors since Griffey way back in 1989!