I have a confession to make. I started this article with a conclusion in mind, only to find that conclusion spectacularly untrue. But then I turned around and found something else that I think is quite interesting. Is it clear in retrospect? I think so. But I enjoyed doing it and learned something along the way, so I decided to write about it anyway.
I had a theory that the average age of the catcher, along with the average age for the most difficult defensive positions, had plummeted over the past decade, with the average age of the DH increasing as a counterbalance. My theory was that the universal DH allowed teams to change their behavior en masse. National League teams that had played older sluggers in the field could move them down the defensive spectrum, either directly to DH or by moving other older players to DH through a chain reaction of moving to easier defensive spots.
It’s beautiful logic, with just one problem: it’s not true. Here is the average season age (as of July 1 each year) of catchers, shortstops and DHs since 2002, the first year we had positional splits that allowed me to do this analysis:
The data is quite noisy, which makes sense to me. It’s not that teams target a certain age; they only make baseball decisions about costs, team control and production. The average age is a result of many decisions made for other reasons. But overall, the pattern I was hoping to see just wasn’t there:
Average age by era, position
| Period | c | SS | DH |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2002-2010 | 29.7 | 28.0 | 31.4 |
| 2011-2020 | 28.9 | 27.1 | 31.0 |
| 2021-2025 | 28.7 | 26.7 | 29.7 |
| 2002-10 vs. 2021-25 | -1.1 | -1.3 | -1.6 |
In fact, DH has experienced the greatest reject in the average age across all positions. That’s very different than I expected. I think some of that is exaggerated. First base has seen the smallest decline among the positions, and I expect many of the displaced older hitters I mentioned in my hypothesis will end up there as well. But if you average the age changes of first base and DH, they are almost exactly the league average for position players. Clearly the data does not support my claim.
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But wait! Those are just position players. My initial theory was about DHs, but there’s another group of older players that I always think about when I roughly divide the league into age cohorts: pitchers. I’ve written about the new team-building strategy of drafting hitters and signing older pitchers in free agency throughout my FanGraphs career. If it’s not the Cubs and the Astros, it’s the O’s and the Jays, or the Yankees and the Cardinals, or any number of teams you can think of that fit this model. Last year, only six teams (the Guardians, Dodgers, Phillies, Pirates, Padres and Mariners) had a pitching group that was younger than their position player counterparts.
Here’s another way to look at the evolution of player age over time:
Oh. Yes. That looks pretty significant.
Like I said, this isn’t a big secret. Jeff Lamb wrote about it in context back in 2016 the curse-breaking Cubs. But at that point, the average pitcher was still younger than the average hitter, and had been that way for decades. Since then, the age of the batsman has continued to decline. Teams are trading a record low number of at-bats for hitters aged 35 and older. Recent looks at aging curves have shown that batters decline earlier and pitchers decline later. It also lines up with conventional wisdom: Hitters age, while pitchers break.
Many effects have fueled this difference, but I think the strongest is the evolution of teams’ opinions on pitchers’ workloads. Collection limits, workload management, scale-up plans: teams are monitoring the health of their young pitchers more than ever before, aware of the risk of injury that comes with overwork. Meanwhile, the aging of pitchers is not as severe as the aging of hitters, and the pitchers most confident in delivering large workloads are the ones already doing so. This leads to more teams trying to find their pitchers from the group of currently performing veterans. Really and truly the golden age from the older starting pitcher. Pitchers debut just as early as their decisive counterpartsbut modern workload management means teams still rely on the old.
Another way to look at it: Twenty-seven pitchers in their 30s threw 150 or more innings in 2025. That’s pretty close to the number of 30-year-olds who threw 150 or more innings in 2010 (30). The average from 2000 to 2015 was around 33 30-year-olds hitting 150 innings. That part of the game hasn’t changed much at all. On the other hand, 2025 saw 43 pitchers in their 20s reach the 150-inning threshold. In 2010, there were 73 people in their twenties who achieved that goal. Between 2000 and 2015, the average was about 62. In other words: we see a greater decrease in workload among younger starters than among older starters.
When team perceptions around health disproportionately limit the workload of young pitchers, you’ll see the difference in that graph. It’s not something anyone did on purpose, at least in my opinion. It’s just a natural consequence of the way teams operate today. So is the decline in the age of hitters: good young hitters with a lot of team control keep knocking on the door earlier and earlier, and what are teams going to do, not play them? The injury risk looks very different there; Players in older positions are more at risk, not younger players, as far as I can tell from the data. And so the age of the hitter continues to decline.
These are certainly not the only reasons why this behavior might occur. If you can think of one way the game has changed in the last 25 years, chances are it indirectly changes the relative ages of the pitcher and hitter. Maybe the universal DH will get more playing time for young outfielders. Perhaps the latest CBA has changed the relative propensity of teams to start service time clocks for their young hitters who could compete for awards. Perhaps, as Eric Longenhagen detailed in 2022, the Rule 5 draft will shift some international pitchers into different roles, helping them reach the Majors more quickly but for smaller chunks of playing time. It is a complex problem, and undoubtedly one with many right answers.
It’s not entirely accurate to say that Major League Baseball is a boys’ game these days. It’s true to some extent, no doubt. But that’s especially true for hitters. Pitchers go in the opposite direction. It’s a paradox Matthew McConaughey would appreciate.
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