MLB rumors: 2017 was a really bad year for older position players

MLB rumors and rumblings. Only a handful of position players 35 and older contributed much value in 2017, continuing a five-year trend.

MLB rumors and rumblings for the free agent market has not exactly been a beehive of activity this offseason. There are plenty of good players still available even though pitchers and catchers report to spring training in about five weeks. Teams seem hesitant to pull the trigger on the remaining players, despite many of them coming off good seasons.

One reason for this reluctance to sign some of the remaining free agents could be their age. The top free agent catcher out there is Jonathan Lucroy, who will be 32 next season. The best available second baseman, Neil Walker, is also 32. One of the top two third basemen still on the market, Todd Frazier, will be 32 in February. Outfielders Lorenzo Cain, Carlos Gomez, Jarrod Dyson, Carlos Gonzalez, and Melky Cabrera will all be 32 or older in the upcoming season.

Position players in their early 30s aren’t exactly over-the-hill, but they’re approaching it. This is especially true recently. Some of the players mentioned above would like three or four-year contracts, which would push them into their mid-30s. At one time, players 35 and older were still quite productive, but there’s a downward trend for these players over the last five years.

The decreasing production of position players 35 and older makes any long-term contract for these veterans riskier than it used to be. Older players have not been as valuable as players in their 20s and early 30s, but they’ve been particularly bad recently. I used the Fangraphs leaderboards to look at the production and playing time for players 35 and older compared to their younger counterparts, and the trend is clear. Let’s dive into the data, taking a look at these MLB rumors and rumblings.

MLB rumors and rumblings. Declining Playing Time for Older Players

Position players 35 and older received just five percent of the total plate appearances last year, which is the lowest percentage since 1978. This was a significant change from the turn of the millennium when older players received more than twice the playing time they’re getting now. Here is the trend in five-year increments.

Percent of All Plate Appearances by Players 35 and older:

• 1988-1992—7 percent
• 1993-1997—8 percent
• 1998-2002—10 percent
• 2003-2007—12 percent
• 2008-2002—10 percent
• 2013-2017—7 percent

This trend of less playing time for older players could be seen as a return to baseball the way it was before the offensive surge in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The most recent five-year stretch matches up well with baseball from 1988 to 1998, before it started to trend upward in 1999.

In 2000, players 35 and older accounted for 11 percent of the plate appearances for the first time since 1986. Their playing time peaked in 2004 and 2007 (13 percent each year) and stayed at or near that level through the 2011 season before its recent downward slide to last year’s five percent.

The heart of the high-offense era was the peak period of playing time for older players. It could be a result of PED use that enabled players to stay on the field later well into their careers. Or it could be a cyclical thing that just happens in baseball. Most likely, it was at least in part because of PED use, but if it’s a cyclical thing, perhaps we’ll see the current group of players under 35 age better than their recent predecessors.

Of course, if the oldest group of players are getting less playing time, a different age group has to be getting more playing time. All age groups fluctuate a bit, with some peaks and valleys, but the oldest group and youngest group are experiencing the most significant changes over the last five years.

MLB rumors and rumblings. Younger Players are Getting More Playing Time

The beneficiaries of the reduced playing time for older players are, naturally, more inexperienced players. More specifically, it’s the youngest group of players who are seeing the most significant increase in playing time over the last 15 years. When players 35 and older reached their peak with 13 percent of the total plate appearances in 2004, players 24 and under had 11 percent. This was the third time in the four years from 2001 to 2004 that the oldest group of players had more plate appearances than the youngest team of players.

Baseball fans will remember the older players during this time. Craig Biggio and Rafael Palmeiro each had four seasons with 650 or more plate appearances during this stretch. Jeff Bagwell played 160 and 156 games at ages 35 and 36 in 2003 and 2004. Steve Finley played in 162 games as a 39-year-old in 2004. And, of course, Barry Bonds enjoyed some memorable late-career success after the age of 35 during this time.

Things have changed over the last six years. In 2012, players 24 and under had 14 percent of the total plate appearances and players 35, and older had nine percent. That five percent gap wasn’t unusual, but things were changing. Since then, the playing time for the younger group of players has increased to a peak of 18 percent last season, while the older group of players has decreased to a just five percent. That gap in playing time is the largest in the previous 30 years.

MLB rumors and rumblings. Younger Players are More Productive

It’s fitting that younger players are getting more playing time recently because they’ve earned it. For most of the last 30 years, players 24 and under have rarely been more productive than players in the 25-29 and 30-34 range, but this is changing.

Players 24 and under have averaged more than 2.0 WAR per 600 plate appearances in each of the last three seasons (2.3, 2.4, and 2.0 WAR, to be exact).  Before this stretch, they’d done this just twice in the previous 27 years. In fact, this group of players has been more productive than the age 25-29, 30-34, or 35 and older groups in two of the last three seasons.

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These excellent young players 24 and under in the last few years include Jose Ramirez, Mookie Betts, Francisco Lindor, Kris Bryant and the dynamic duo of Bryce Harper and Mike Trout, both of whom had a season with nine or more WAR before they were 25 years old.

The historically great Trout has had three such seasons at a young age, along with two other seasons with 7.9 and 8.9 WAR. The last time players aged 24 and under were this good in a single season was 2007, when they averaged 2.3 WAR per 600 PA.

The top young players that year included David Wright, Grady Sizemore, and Jose Reyes. Unlike the current crop of young players, the 2007 group was an outlier. The WAR per 600 PA for players 24 and under dropped back down to 1.7 the following year. Younger players are getting more playing time and are more productive, while older players are fading out sooner than they have in the past.

Next: Rafael Palmeiro is making his MLB comeback, no for real

After diving into these MLB rumors and rumblings, players under 34 have almost always been better than players 35 and older, but this is truer recently than at any time in the last 30 years.