Photo Via Christian Yelich - Instagram
Christian Yelich
Christian Yelich had some significant moments in 2024 that were highly publicized, including his first All Star Game in five years. Something else he did for the first time, however, drew less attention.
At 32 years old, Yelich was the oldest position player to appear in a game for the 2024 Brewers. It was a big change from the year before, when he was six years younger than Carlos Santana and Josh Donaldson, and from 2022 when he could have been the youngest Brewer in an outfield featuring Andrew McCutchen and Lorenzo Cain. Yelich is the youngest player to be the Brewers’ oldest position player since 1973, when utilityman John Felske was only 31.
This was a stark change for the Brewers, but it matches a leaguewide trend: Across the majors in 2024 batters in their age 36 season or older batted just 5008 times, accounting for about 2.7% of all plate appearances. As recently as 2015 that total was at 5%. It was over 6% in 2013, over 7% in 2010 and over 8% in 2008. Increasingly, baseball’s elder statesmen are going away.
There are multiple possible reasons for this trend. One factor that almost certainly contributes is the rapid evolution of pitching in the current era. It makes sense that aging players would see their bat speed diminish and have an increasingly difficult time catching up with pitches in the upper 90’s and low 100’s, an increasingly common phenomenon. That velocity, predictably, was flagged as a possible cause of the rise in pitcher injuries in a report this winter, but it might also be shortening careers for position players.
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Expensive Contracts
There are also possible economic considerations in play for both teams and players: Longtime big leaguers generally require more expensive contracts than rookies and might occasionally price themselves out of jobs with thrifty organizations. For their part, a player who has already had a long, big league career has made more money than his predecessors did and has less need to stick around for one last payday during his declining years. It’s also been 25 years since MLB’s last expansion, the longest such gap since the leagues expanded for the first time in 1961, and that lack of job creation coupled with the game’s global growth creates more competition for roster spots and might also cost some aging players jobs.
Whatever the reason or reasons, this trend has a real impact on the narrative of the game itself. As recently noted on the podcast Effectively Wild, the current active career leader in MLB home runs is Giancarlo Stanton with just 429. That’s the lowest total for an active leader since Dave Winfield had 406 following the 1991 season, and it makes 2024 one of just a handful of seasons in the last 50 years where MLB had no active players with 500. Even when they’re not chasing records or milestones, however, the “grizzled veteran” and “clubhouse leader” have been common roles in baseball stories for as long as there have been stories told about baseball. Increasingly, however, the game does not have a spot for them.
The shortening of a player’s productive window could also have labor implications: Under MLB’s collective bargaining agreement players are not eligible for free agency and therefore often do not receive their first long-term contract until they’ve played six full MLB seasons (and since most players come up during a season, they usually also spend a partial debut season with their original club). Those contracts are often heavily backloaded, but if players begin to lose effectiveness at a younger age teams may be even more unlikely to offer extended deals to first-time free agents and deal with that decline.
One hundred and eight batters made their MLB debut in 2024, and their median age was 25 years old. That means at least half of the players who debuted this season will be at least 31 and more likely 32 before they reach free agency, and if they’re not going to be productive past their mid-30s then they may only have a couple of MLB seasons left to cash in. If older players continue to be increasingly unlikely to stay in the game, then future collective bargaining negotiations may need to focus on finding opportunities for them to reach their full earning potential sooner.
One of the challenges baseball faces is that the game no longer fits many of its traditional narratives. The starting pitcher, historically the protagonist in most game stories, is now increasingly unlikely to pitch deep into games and more likely than ever to miss extended stretches of time due to injury. On the offensive side, however, baseball may face a less-reported narrative concern as even the game’s elite stars are unlikely to stay in the spotlight as long as they used to.
