Fun with Roster Ages

[Ted]

Man StatsPlus is great. I keep finding cool stuff. FYI, California's pitching cumulative stats are just great. But uhh, don't look at the reverse order offensive stats. Nothing to see there. One link I don't know if any of you have clicked on the team age link, but there's probably something to be gleaned there. I wish it had short A and Rookie Ball. AAA is kind of where age is less important because we all keep AAAA players there forever. AA can be similar, too. So the most informative level is probably A ball. However, I started looking at this for the following: Here is the list of teams whose average AAA player is older than their average MLB player.

Valencia 25.73 to 24.62
Boise 27.32 to 27.13
Atlantic City 27.83 to 27.08
Hawaii 27.85 to 26.95
Nashville 28.25 to 27.07
but the winner is OMAHA! 30.31 to 26.00

Good lord, Justin. Cut the cord already. Some of these guys need to be told to get on with their lives.

Okay, moving on. Here are some single A ages.

Boise 24.85
Wichita 23.65
Edmonton 23.30
Phoenix 23.09
Atlantic City 22.83
Calgary 22.70
Hawaii 22.65
Nashville 22.60
Rockville 22.47
Valencia 22.45

but wait, I'm the 26th team, and my A age is 21.54, so the at least the A ball spread isn't that big.

So what do we see here? Overall I think we've tightened up compared to when I came into the league. The spread used to be a lot bigger. A cursory look through rookie ball shows me mostly teenagers, as opposed to the all 20 year old rookie balls of a decade ago. Again, I'd love to see those actual numbers. I'd bet short A ball is a little ugly still. Rookie ball almost has to be young because we don't want to cut our draftees immediately.

Anyway, why am I bringing this up? Well, skip reading further if you don't want to listen to me get preachy. But hey, there's an aging and development curve. After a certain point, players are much less likely to both bump and develop. That doesn't mean that they can't. We've all seen the late bloomers, and this is why we all hold on to AAA and AAAA level players. But if a guy can't play his way out of the lower minor levels by 22 years old, maybe cut bait on most of them. Will it matter? Probably not, but there are literally a horde of 5/6/6/6/5 bats and 6/4/6 arms that are 18-20 years old that are minor league FAs. Those guys are much much more likely (Still a really small chance) to turn into something than older, similarly or less talented players. Furthermore, if you don't want to give up on your 22 year old yet, then cut the 0.5 star 25 year old in AA and promote the 22 year old from A. The point is, minor league playing time is a resource. Wasting it on players with minimal to zero chance of ever impacting a big league team is perhaps not the best use of that resource.

Of the above teams, 22 really isn't that old for single A, but given that's the age a lot of players are getting into the Brewster, it's maybe a tad high. We have a younger development curve than actual baseball, and many MLB single A teams have one or two teenagers. Interestingly, the four oldest single A teams are expansion franchises, and the two most recent are the oldest. So there may just be a lack of time to fill out the rosters. I do wonder if just dumping every player over 25 on those rosters (and there are a bunch of them for current minor league FA's wouldn't be a bad idea.

[Lane]

I'm very here for Preachy Ted.

As an aside, and not meaning to take anything away from what you're saying, last year's draft was pretty old, or at least it felt that way. I think because of the change to the day eligibly a couple years back. So that could be a small contributor to the mid minors ages.

Outside of that though, I cosign on your cut the cord philosophy.

[RonCo]

I look at our roster ages quite a bit. YS9 is in the bottom 5 at every level, and we tend to play about .500 ball at each level. I agree with Stephen...I like preachy Ted.

[agrudez]

Ruining the hopes and dreams of 23 year old pixels every season is what gets me up in the morning.

[felipe]

I'm just going to say that it's no coincidence that the two expansion teams have the highest average age.

Three years just isn't enough time to bring in enough draft picks, (after all we've had only 60 ammy picks to fill roughly 150 minor leagues spots)

I'm looking forward to the Middle East league starting so my soon to be mid twenty year old ex- players have somewhere to play when I cut them...

The rest of you have no excuse though...

[ae37jr]

I have no shame in saying that I use my triple A team as my bba "b-team". Scooping up the best minor league free agents I can find regardless of age. Depth is King in this injury plagued game.

I also keep one or two captains per level in the minors. They help in developing the youngsters.

Other then that though, we're one of the youngest teams at every level, so I agree.

[Spiccoli]

Ruining the hopes and dreams of 23 year old pixels every season is what gets me up in the morning.

lol... There is an odd satisfaction to cutting a 24 year old still flailing in at single A. The game should put a graphic like from FF Tactics with the player pleading for you not to let them go.

[agrudez]

Laodameia's low bravery and faith is like a prospect with very low work ethic and a bad dev curve. Just gotta cut the chaff to make room for the wheat!

FFT is the best game ever made - love the reference. As an aside, if you're as big a fan of it as I am, google insane final fantasy tactics and enjoy. Someone did a complete overhaul of a ROM version of the game and turned the difficulty up to 1000 (someone else did a FF7 version, too, which was also fun).

[Ted]

Laodameia's low bravery and faith is like a prospect with very low work ethic and a bad dev curve. Just gotta cut the chaff to make room for the wheat!

FFT is the best game ever made - love the reference. As an aside, if you're as big a fan of it as I am, google insane final fantasy tactics and enjoy. Someone did a complete overhaul of a ROM version of the game and turned the difficulty up to 1000 (someone else did a FF7 version, too, which was also fun).

I love FFT as well, but have difficulty playing it anymore It's hard to find a version without slower load times and screen wipes than I can tolerate for such an old game. The Tactics RPG genre in general has been crap for a long time. (Basically since FFT and Shining Force). The new ones all suffer from a ridiculous overproliferation of characters and character types that are just marginally different enough that you feel the need to make them, but force to you replay fight after fight in boring grindy fashion if you ever want to use or level up any of them. The XCOM and Shadowrun reboots have been decent, but still not quite as good.

[agrudez]

They made an android version of FFT that I bought for my tablet a couple years ago for less than $10, iirc. It's basically a perfect game for a touch screen control format and the load times, etc. are great. After playing the insane rom tweak; however, I had trouble going back to play the base game. The insane rom tweak is just SO HARD that it forces you to really pull back every single layer of the FFT onion to survive. I was forced to start min/maxing game obscure mechanics (things like faith, bravery, zodiac signs, avoidance, etc.) that I never even bothered to learn about through all of my other times through the game since the difficulty was so tame in comparison and I could get by with ham-handed or 'cheap' (hello, hamedo) builds. It's tough (and significantly less rewarding) to go from an 11 back down to a 5.

[Ted]

They made an android version of FFT that I bought for my tablet a couple years ago for less than $10, iirc. It's basically a perfect game for a touch screen control format and the load times, etc. are great. After playing the insane rom tweak; however, I had trouble going back to play the base game. The insane rom tweak is just SO HARD that it forces you to really pull back every single layer of the FFT onion to survive. I was forced to start min/maxing game obscure mechanics (things like faith, bravery, zodiac signs, avoidance, etc.) that I never even bothered to learn about through all of my other times through the game since the difficulty was so tame in comparison and I could get by with ham-handed or 'cheap' (hello, hamedo) builds. It's tough (and significantly less rewarding) to go from an 11 back down to a 5.

I really can't stand "touch" games that have any depth. Input is just too slow for me. Drives me nuts. But maybe I'll give it a shot.

[Spiccoli]

I have it on IOS, phone and Ipad. It’s very well done. Though sometimes that camera in battles can get irritating.

But it’s a minor complaint

[niles08]

I'll be the first to admit that I have depth at AAA however I will also admit many of those older guys were signed because I had literally nobody in AAA lol so many just happened to join the AAA team this year.