They Haven’t Killed off All the Old Guys Yet

Monday was a big day for baseball’s old-heads. Ken Rosenthal published a piece in The Athletic in which 41-year-old Max Scherzer declared his intention to keep pitching. Justin Turner’s agent told Jon Morosi that the soon-to-be-41-year-old plans on playing in 2026. Kyle Hendricks, 35, has had enough, however. The man who started Game 7 of the 2016 World Series for the Cubs is hanging ‘em up after 12 seasons in The Show.

As a geriatric Millennial myself, these decisions got me thinking. Clayton Kershaw has retired, Kenta Maeda is going back to Japan, and Adam Ottavino was just trying to talk his way into the Rockies’ president of baseball ops job. My generation is going extinct, at least on the baseball diamond.

This doesn’t bother me too much. I’ve been older than most major league players for most of the time I’ve been covering baseball full-time. Some of the prospects and college players I run into these days were born after I graduated high school; I’m gonna feel old whether Caleb Thielbar is pitching or not.

Still, it got me thinking about something Lauren from the Batting Around podcast posted during Game 7 of the World Series. With Scherzer pitching to either Freddie Freeman or Miguel Rojas, she wondered if we would ever again see a pitcher born in the Reagan Administration face a hitter born under George H.W. Bush.

The answer to that question is almost certainly going to be yes, and it would have been so even if Scherzer weren’t coming back. In fact, no fewer than 30 pitchers born under Reagan pitched in the majors in 2025. Believe it or not, Rich Hill, who connived to make two starts in the bigs this year, was born while Jimmy Carter was still in office.

The Clinton-era dominance here shouldn’t be surprising; he took office in January 1993 and stayed there for eight years, so players born when he was president ranged in age from 24 to 32 during the 2025 season. That’s prime baseball-playing age. Clinton-era births accounted for 70.5% of major league plate appearances, 73.0% of innings pitched, and 72.6% of WAR this year.

Enjoy it while you can, kids. Time hunts everyone down eventually. Like us Reagan babies, who are growing rarer and rarer.

Not a single position player born before January 20, 1989 has a contract for next season. Turner, McCutchen, and Goldschmidt have all made noise about playing in 2026, and I’d expect all of them to land somewhere. Someone always signs Pham every year, too. But eight months from now, we might be down to half a dozen position players who are older than “She Drives Me Crazy” by Fine Young Cannibals.

After spending the 2010s with Nelson Cruz kicking around, mashing 30 dingers a year at an age when most men are reading Max Hastings and throwing their back out, it’s quite jarring that we have so few position players in their late 30s, let alone their 40s.

Fortunately, the pitchers have us covered.

Yes, this is an old man’s game. One of these old farts just started Game 7 of the World Series, and pitched well. And there’s quite a bit of depth here, too. Quality low- and medium-leverage relievers, a closer or two, and a handful of average-or-better starting pitchers. Contrast that to the position player group: Gurriel is, like, three or four years past the point where I’ve had any idea why you’d want to waste a roster spot on him. The closest any of the pitchers come to that description is Kimbrel.

We might lose one or two more of these guys before the season starts. Strickland already retired once and came back. Pressly apparently had offers after being cut by the Cubs, but he was blasé about pitching again and openly considered retirement. Remember the Lance Lynn situation last year; he was ready to pitch under the right circumstances, but none of the offers he received were good enough to entice him to come back. I expect at least a few of these pitchers to go through the same thought process over the winter.

But the elder Millennials still have quite a bit of bench depth. We Reagan-era babies might be dwindling in number, but we’re not even close to disappearing entirely.