Let’s look at a few more graphs on the ages of hitters and pitchers

I looked at it earlier this week the remarkable case of Benjamin Button. Um, no, that’s not right. I’ve been looking at the fact that the average age of big league hitters continues to decline, like Button, while pitchers have not followed suit. There are a number of possible explanations for that pattern, and if the mystery appeals to you, I highly recommend reading the comments on that article, where our excellent readers have put forward some solid theories. I think there’s still enough meat on the bone to figure out what’s causing this trend, but I won’t go into that (much) today. Instead, I made like Woodward and Bernstein and followed the money.

Age is a good measure of length of service; older players generally, but not always, have been in the league longer than younger players. Likewise, length of service is a good proxy for salary; Players who have been in the league longer tend to make more money than newcomers, for a variety of reasons. So does our data really just say that pitchers’ salaries are going up? Well, sort of.

I assumed salaries for all Major League players as of 2019, excluding the shortened 2020 season. I’ve broken them down by type: pitchers in one bucket, hitters in the other, and Shohei Ohtani in both. The total salaries of pitchers and hitters have both increased: the passage of time, inflation, and so on. But after a huge increase leading up to 2022, when seven different hitters signed nine-figure contracts, overall hitter spending has stabilized. Meanwhile, pitching salaries are catching up:

As a side note, I only collected data through 2019 because it is outrageously difficult to get complete salary data. If you’re looking for Opening Day annualized salaries, they will definitely be listed. If you’re looking for free agency contracts, they’re pretty easy to find. There are no discussions about what Freddie Vrijman’s salary was in 2025; it is a public record. But what about Freeman’s former teammate? Justin Deanwho collected 52 days of service time in his debut season? What about split contracts? Late debuts? Up-and-down types? I’ve worked out a method for what I consider a very good approximation of those salaries, but I don’t feel confident going back before the start of RosterResource’s database, which starts in 2019. Even then this is an approximation, although as I said I am sure it is a good approximation.

I haven’t found much compelling evidence in the salary data of the shift toward older pitchers and younger hitters, at least at a high level. But that’s never stopped me, and with such detailed data there’s no reason to settle for 40,000 feet of visibility. I then separated the hitters and pitchers by service time group to look at the percentage of positional spending going to each group over time. There is no clear fingerprint of changing economic behavior here:

But I discovered something interesting after breaking down the data this way. The share of innings covered by free agent pitchers peaked in 2025, while the share of innings covered by free agent pitchers has been fairly consistent over the past half-decade. Much of the playing time goes to pre-arb players, especially on the pitching side, which is intriguing in the context of average pitcher age:

However, that’s not really new behavior. Teams have always used a lot of pre-arb pitchers. As we’ve discussed extensively in these discussions, pitchers often get injured and replacements must be found. That’s often a rookie looking to play a game or two, or perhaps a low-leverage reliever covering innings. However, it’s clear that these guys aren’t sticking around long enough to impact the averages. Pre-arb pitchers get a larger share of playing time than their counterparts, but that changes by the time of arbitration.

Let me put all these overlapping tables and percentages together in a simple graph. What has been going on in recent years? Older pitchers are more important to teams’ plans, which is why they get paid:

That changes the relative value of trading for a cost-controlled young pitcher. Why did the Cubs send a rich trove of prospects to the Marlins? Edward Cabrera? I’m sure this isn’t the only reason, but a lot of it comes down to looking at that chart, drawing a trendline and making a comical “uh-oh” sound.

I hope I don’t convey more confidence in my opinions about these trends than I actually feel. I find them phenomenally difficult to interpret. I have a lot of uncertainty about every single part of the equation. Will hitters stay younger while pitchers stay older? Maybe, but there are natural limits to that, and who knows what future training or talent acquisition patterns will look like? What would an international draft or further downsizing of the minor league mean for amateurs? Will the money continue to flow to the same types of players? It’s very difficult to know; This year’s free agency class is sending mixed signals. Can teams get more innings out of their existing younger pitchers? What will the next CBA say about this, and about the salary and roster structure in general?

I don’t even know how much I don’t know about all these topics, which definitely makes my opinion on the Cabrera trade and others like it from last year uncertain. But if you’d let me put it into words right now, I’d say this: Too many teams were caught simultaneously playing the same game of bringing in experienced pitchers to complement the hitters they had so carefully and productively developed. At the same time, the Dodgers and the Mets, two teams that until recently developed many of their own starters, for better or worse, did the cost-benefit analysis and began bringing in free agent starters instead. The supply of veteran free agent prospects may be greater, but the demand is even greater. If you need pitching and don’t want to spend in free agency, you have no choice but to accept the current market rate for controllable pitching: the moon and the stars.

Is it worth moving some potential candidates for controllable pitching now? Should you opt for high-AAV one-year deals for veterans, hoping the fever will subside after the next CBA? Is the right move to just bite the bullet and pay up Framber Valdez whatever it takes? Heck, should you just “pitch point” for a year and hope you’re unusually healthy? I’m glad I don’t have to make these decisions. In the magical Christmas land where I manage a baseball team, the world already acts according to my wishes, so I would simply make a call Paul Skenes. But in real life you can’t do that. For front offices across the majors, this is undoubtedly one of the top team-building dilemmas right now, and it will be fascinating to see how the rest of this winter’s free agency period plays out.