Mariano Rivera and Father Time: Comebacks After 40

Mariano Rivera turned 43 last November. There was wide speculation that he would retire at the end of the 2012 season, until his 2012 season ended with an untimely season-ending injury, and Rivera decided to try to make a comeback so that his last season could occur on his terms.

But even though Mariano Rivera’s career is full of unprecedented moments, that does not mean that it will be trivial for him to come up with another. Baseball has been played in America for the better part of two centuries, and unprecedented things are generally unprecedented for a reason: they are extraordinarily unlikely. So how many players have been able to play effectively after losing a full season in their 40s?

I asked Jeff Zimmerman to run a search on that very question. (I know that Mo didn’t lose a full season, as he did manage to throw 8 1/3 innings before going down with the injury. Still, this list may give a sense of what he’s up against.)

In big league history, there have been 22 pitchers who have missed a year in their 40s and then appeared in a game, and only nine of them pitched more than 30 innings. Six of the 22 made their brief comebacks in 1944-45, when the league’s talent was diluted by World War II, and only one of those players managed to pitch more than 30 innings.

Here are those pitchers. The nine who made “successful” comebacks are in bold and italics.

Clark Griffith	6 IP in 1909 (age 39), 1 game (0 IP) in 1912 (age 42), 1 IP in 1913 (age 43), 1 IP in 1914 (age 44)
Kaiser Wilhelm	243 2/3 IP in 1914 (age 40), 1 IP in 1915 (age 41), 8 IP in 1921 (age 47)
Nick Altrock	3 IP in 1915 (age 38), 24 IP in 1918 (age 41), 1 game (0 IP) in 1919 (age 42), 2 IP in 1924 (age 47)
Bill Donovan	skipped 1 year, 6 IP in 1918 (age 41)
Chief Bender	skipped 7 years, 1 IP in 1925 (age 41)
Fred Johnson	skipped 14 years, 69 IP in 1938 (age 44)
Lou Polli	skipped 11 years, 35 2/3 IP in 1944 (age 42)
Pete Appleton	skipped 2 years, 23 2/3 IP in 1945 (age 41)
Guy Bush	skipped 6 years, 4 1/3 IP in 1945 (age 43)
Paul Schreiber	skipped 21 years, 4 1/3 IP in 1945 (age 42)
Clay Touchstone	skipped 15 years, 10 IP in 1945 (age 42)
Hod Lisenbee	skipped 8 years, 80 1/3 innings in 1945 (age 46)
Ted Lyons	skipped 3 years, 42 2/3 IP in 1946 (age 45)
Bucky Walters	skipped 1 year, 4 IP and 2 PA in 1950 (age 41)
Al Benton	skipped 1 year, 37 2/3 IP in 1952 (age 41)
Bobo Newsom	skipped 3 years, 60 1/3 IP in 1952 (age 44), 38 2/3 IP in 1953 (age 45)
Dizzy Trout	skipped 4 years, 1/3 IP in 1957 (age 42)
Satchel Paige	skipped 1 year, 62 IP in 1951 (age 44), 138 IP in 1952 (age 45), 117 1/3 IP in 1953 (age 46), 3 IP in 1965 (age 58)
Diomedes Olivo	9 2/3 IP in 1960 (age 41), 84 1/3 IP in 1962 (age 43), 13 1/3 IP in 1963 (age 44)
Bert Blyleven	skipped 1 year, 133 IP in 1992 (age 41)
John Franco	skipped 1 year, 34 1/3 IP in 2003 (age 42), 46 IP in 2004 (age 43), 15 IP in 2005 (age 44)
Jamie Moyer	skipped 1 year, 53 2/3 IP in 2012 (age 49)

John Franco may be the single best comparison on the entire table, a rubber-armed closer who underwent Tommy John surgery when he was 42 but returned to the Mets bullpen in 2003. In fairness, Armando Benitez had taken the closer role from Franco midway through the 1999 season, so Franco was no longer the Mets’ primary closer. But he was an ageless reliever, like Mo.

Franco appeared to be effective in 2003, throwing 34 1/3 innings with a 2.65 ERA, but his strikeouts fell by half, and his 5.22 FIP was almost twice his ERA. In 2004, he pitched 46 innings with a 5.28 ERA; in 2005, 15 innings with a 7.20 ERA, and that was it.

Jamie Moyer, the oldest player ever to undergo Tommy John surgery, is another recent memory. Moyer was basically replacement-level in 2009 and 2010, before his surgery, with a 5.04 FIP; and he was basically replacement-level in 53 2/3 innings in 2012, after his comeback, with a 5.54 FIP.

Bert Blyleven had rotator cuff surgery in 1991, and his surface numbers in 1992 were a lot worse than his components. He threw 133 innings of 4.74 ERA/4.16 FIP ball, almost an exact mirror of his 1990 performance of 134 innings with a 5.24 ERA/3.95 FIP. (Those weren’t good numbers, as it was still the neo-deadball era; his FIP- was 103 in both years, slightly worse than league average.) He retired after that.

Diomedes Olivo and Satchel Paige spent a whole career in another league before spending a few of their golden years twirling in the majors. Olivo was a Dominican League legend; according to the Baseball-Reference Bullpen, he later became “undersecretary in charge of sports for the Dominican Republic.” Olivo wasn’t injured in 1961, he just dominated the International League, winning the Pitcher of the Year award. (Three years earlier, that award went to Tommy Lasorda. Three years later, Mel Stottlemyre won it.) I frankly don’t know why the Pirates refused to call him up; they finished 6th that year, a year after winning the World Series.

Paige, of course, should need no introduction, but it is a small measure of his talent that he has a career ERA of 3.29 (81 ERA-) in 476 innings despite debuting at the age of 41 on Larry Doby’ s Indians. His missed season did not come due to injury, either. The Indians released him after the 1949 season, and he returned to the Negro Leagues in 1950. He returned to the majors in 1951, and pitched poorly that year but quite well in 1952-53.

Bobo Newsom was generally called “well-traveled” toward the end of his career; one newspaper noted that he was “traded 27 times in 27 years.” He pitched 709 innings in the minors in 1949-1951, the three years he went between stints in the majors. He didn’t have much left, but he ate innings. (Judging by his photos, that wasn’t all he ate.)

Jesse Orosco, the most game-appearingest pitcher in baseball history, didn’t make the list, but he is also a reasonable comparison for Rivera. He blew out his elbow just six games (and 2 1/3 innings) into the 2000 season, when he was 43. He returned to pitch 16 innings in 2001, 27 in 2002, and 34 in 2003 before he retired, pitching mostly though not exclusively to lefties. (221 PA vs. lefties, 133 vs. righties.) His 2001 and 2002 were reasonably effective, with a 3.35 ERA and 4.44 FIP over those 43 innings. But his 2003 was horrible, as he posted a 7.68 ERA, and that was that.

Among hitters, there were a lot more guys who came back for a few plate appearances here and there, but almost all of those guys were before World War II, and some were player-managers who inserted themselves into a game about once a year. Of 45 hitters who skipped a year in their 40s and then came back to play a game, only four returned for a meaningful number of postwar at-bats: Al Simmons, Jack Saltzgaver, Rick Ferrell, Bert Campaneris, Julio Franco, and Tim Raines. None is a particularly good comparison.

Rick Ferrell got his final at-bats in 1947, after having retired in 1946 to coach. Campaneris spent 1982 in the Mexican League; Franco spent his time off in Japan, Korea, and Mexico. And Tim Raines didn’t play in 2000 because he had actually retired, too; Rany Jazayerli wrote a piece about his Hall of Fame candidacy that March. He hit a fluky .303/.413/.449 in 109 comeback PAs in 2001, but fell back to earth with a .191/.351/.258 in 114 PAs in 2002. After that, Rock hung up his cleats for good.

Needless to say, Mariano Rivera is unique in baseball history. It may seem pointless to try to compare him to other quadragenarian players, considering that there was no one like him when he was in his 20s or 30s. He’s the greatest reliever in baseball history, and arguably the greatest postseason player in baseball history, and so forth and so on.

The point of this exercise is, maybe, a simple one: players get old, and very few are effective in their 40s, and very very very few are able to keep being effective after being away from the major leagues for a full year. It’s possible that Mariano Rivera has more in common with Satchel Paige’s preternatural arm strength than he has with a mortal human like John Franco or Jesse Orosco.

If he does manage to pull off a successful final year, that will be cause for great celebration. But if he does not, then there will be no shame in that. It is, after all, unprecedented.