Cameron Selik dominated in Hagerstown before his Promotion, but was he "too old" for the level? Photo Eastcountysports.com
When looking at minor league teams and trying to assess talent, the notion of age and experience becomes important. Quite simply, an older more experienced player will have the advantage over younger counterparts. Even if the relative skill levels are the same, with age and with professional playing experience comes baseball wisdom that gives the older player the advantage.
So, when looking at prospects at various levels one has to take into account the players age, their number of years of professional experience, and their injury history along with performance to properly judge a player.
So the question really is, “How old is ‘too old’ for a player at a particular level.
I have always used a rule-of-thumb measurement advocated by John Sickels at minorleagueball.com for looking at player ages (I cannot find the original Sickels posting but have seen it attributed to him in several forums). That rule-of-thumb is as follows:
- AAA: Typical Age range is 23-24. Age 25 depends. 26+ is old
- AA: 22-23. 24 depends. 25+ is old
- High-A: 20-22. 23 depends. 24+ is old
- Low-A: 19-21. 22 depends. 23+ is old
- Short-A: 19-20. 21/22 for draft year guys only. 22+ is old
- GCL: 17-19. 20 for draft year guys only. 21+ is old
But does this scale make sense, especially for pitchers? Lets consider two draft scenarios (note; we’re specifically NOT taking into account any injuries for the purposes of this “ideal case” argument, at least not yet):
1. You draft a high schooler at age 18. Even if he signs quickly you’re probably not going to get a lot out of him his 18-yr old season because he’s already pitched a number of innings for his HS team. So his probable progression as a prospect should be:
- Age 18/Draft year: a few innings in the Rookie League
- Age 19: Rookie League if he’s a normal with an eye towards moving up to short-A if he succeeds.
- Age 20: Low-A
- Age 21: High-A
- Age 22: AA
- Age 23: AAA
That’s 5 full pro seasons, by which time the former HSer is 23, should have traversed the entirety of the minor league system, is aged 23 and is just reaching rule-5 eligibility. In fact, this progression is probably exactly how the rule5 rules were arrived at.
2. You draft a college junior at age 21. Again, even if he signs quickly he’s finishing off a long college season so you don’t want to kill him, but this is exactly why the short season leagues exist. So his normal progression would be:
- Age 21/Draft year: Short-A or possibly Rookie League
- Age 22: Low-A
- Age 23: High-A
- Age 24: AA
- Age 25: AAA
At which point he’s got 4 pro seasons and is also just reaching rule5 eligibilty.
HOWEVER; note that Sickel’s “rule of thumb” rules essentially rules any college draftee who is following a normal progression through the minors in the “depends” status. To say nothing of a prospect who may suffer a major injury that costs them a season. Plus, I don’t think a player can really be considered “too old” at age 22 in his first full season of pro ball in low-A, even if he’s going against a bunch of former HSers who are 2 years younger but playing in their third pro seasons.
So, perhaps the rule of thumb isn’t exactly correct. Lets dig deeper and look at the actual rosters of minor league teams.
Here is a statistical analysis of age levels of every pitcher on the roster of the International, Eastern, Carolina and South Atlantic league (where the AAA, AA, High-A and Low-A affiliates of the Nationals play). I took the rosters as they stood on 5/4/11 and calculated the average age, captured youngest and oldest, then grabbed the 25th, 50th (median) and 75% quartile age of the population.
| 2011 Statistics (Pitchers only) | International | Eastern | Carolina | South Atlantic |
| Level | AAA | AA | High-A | Low-A |
| average–> | 27.24 | 25.30 | 23.51 | 22.41 |
| youngest–> | 20.27 | 19.96 | 19.96 | 18.88 |
| 25th Quartile –> | 25.22 | 24.11 | 22.33 | 21.56 |
| 50th Quartile (median) –> | 26.61 | 25.05 | 23.50 | 22.52 |
| 75th Quartile –> | 28.47 | 26.32 | 24.45 | 23.33 |
| oldest–> | 36.87 | 31.81 | 28.46 | 28.70 |
| % on the 40-man roster –> | 32.64% | 12.65% | 0.89% | 0.53% |
Caveats to this data: it isn’t the entirety of the Minor leagues. But for the International, Eastern and South Atlantic league it represents a sizeable portion of those leagues (14, 12 and 14 of the 30 teams at that level). The Carolina league only has 8 of 30 high-A teams and may not be entirely representative of the high-A population. A task for a rainy day. Also, these are age-analysis of Pitchers only. I did not take into account any rehab stints, but these older major leaguers will just skew the average age, and won’t affect he quartile ages that much.
Now, based on this analysis of this data, i’ll now say that anyone in the 0-25th quartile to be “really young” for that level, 25th-50th to be “young” for the level, 50th-75th to be “old” for the level, and 75th-100th quartile to be “really old” for that level. Based on these new bench marks, here’s the new rule of thumbs:
| AAA | AA | High-A | Low-A | |
| Really Young | 25.22 or younger | 24.11 or younger | 22.33 or younger | 21.56 or younger |
| Young | 25.22 – 26.61 | 24.11 – 25.05 | 22.33 – 23.50 | 21.56 – 22.52 |
| Old | 26.61 – 28.47 | 25.05 – 26.32 | 23.5 – 24.45 | 22.52 – 23.33 |
| Really Old | 28.47 or older | 26.32 or older | 24.45 or older | 23.33 or older |
Ironically, this list doesn’t look a whole lot different than Sickel’s rules of thumb. Perhaps he wasn’t that far off to begin with.
I’ll follow-up this post with a quick age-analysis of the starters in our system, to give context to their status and accomplishments. To answer the first question about Cameron Selik, at age 23.7 he was “really old” for Low-A, and right now falls slightly into the “old” category for low-A. So, while he was pitching fantastically in Hagerstown he also was one of the oldest pitchers in that league (161 out of 187 ranking).
