The clubhouse culture in major league baseball frowns upon young players who act as if they’ve made it before they pay their dues. Neophytes are told to respect the game and know their place in a pastime that values long-term consistency over short-term flash.
Baseball is essentially a veteran’s game, and that’s traditionally been reflected in the All-Star game.
“Not anymore when you have (20) guys under 25 in this thing,” Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper said Tuesday before starting for the NL All-Stars. “So I guess it’s a young game..”
If that sounds brash, consider that Harper had earned a reputation for being arrogant even before he entered the big leagues as a 19-year old phenomenon. Braves fans are among the many home team supporters who boo Harper each time he visits their ballpark.
But Harper has a point. Players, fans and the All-Star managers selected 20 players aged 25 or under for this years’s game, a record number for a game that was played 84 times before Tuesday.
The new generation of stars is led by Harper and Angels center fielder Mike Trout.
Harper became the youngest ever position player ever in the All-Star game when he made it as a 19-year old in 2012. After a relatively down year by his standards in 2014, this season Harper leads the majors in on-base percentage and slugging percentage.
This season Trout, 23, became the youngest player in baseball history to compile both 100 home runs and 100 stolen bases, beating out Alex Rodriguez for the mark. He’s been an All-Star in each of his four big-league seasons and is the reigning AL MVP.
“There’s definitely a lot of younger players in the game now as compared to back in the 90s,” Braves right-hander Shelby Miller said. “The game is kind of evolving and changing a little bit but there is still those guys that have been around forever playing great baseball. Calling young guys up and they are coming up and performing—it’s fun to watch, it’s fun to see.”
Miller, 24, is among the young All-Stars. He was the lone Braves player in to make it and leads the team in Wins Above Replacement, a metric that attempts to summarize a player’s value.
According to ESPN Stats and Info, the Braves are one of 11 teams with a player 25 or under leading the team in WAR at the All-Star break. That hasn’t happened since 1980, when the young stars included future Hall of Fame players Rickey Henderson, Ozzie Smith, Robin Yount and Andre Dawson.
There have been other years with lots of good 25-and-under players. But there have never been this many young All-Stars, and two popular theories have emerged to explain the trend.
One is that stricter testing for performance-enhancing drugs has made it more difficult for star players to play at a higher level as they age. As they fade away sooner, young stars rise up to take their place.
Another factor could be the explosion of travel baseball leagues over the past decade. Elite youth players are getting much more exposure to high-level, year-round baseball and develop earlier—Harper famously is a product of that system.
Teams also have incentives to promote young players earlier. Doing so starts the clock sooner for arbitration and free agency but, in the meantime, young players who produce can supplant higher-priced veterans.
“When I came up, guys played in the minor leagues for a long time,” said AL manager Ned Yost, who played catcher for three big-league teams in the early 1980s. “Now it seems guys get called up sooner and teams let them develop (in the majors). Those young guys bring energy and life.”
