Major League Baseball, like any professional sports league in the United States, seeks the best for the show and each franchise also seeks the best for its finances. Within this strategy, experience matters less and less and youth is gaining more and more followers. But no one should be surprised, because in a business you have to weigh many things, and this is one of the things that teams look at most when hiring their players: the famous aging curve.
Three decades is a long time for MLB
Once again, age is an important factor in preventing a New York team from signing a player, just as it is happening with Pete Alonso and the Mets, which seems to be ending with a much shorter deal than the American expected. Well, the Yankees are also experiencing something similar with one of their prospects to play third base now that Gleyber Torres has left the organization for the Detroit Tigers.
That’s the opinion of WFAN Radio’s Keith McPherson, who believes that it is better for the Yankees not to go for proven players such as Alex Bregman or Luis Arraez. The reason is simple and he states that although Bregman is a World Series champion and a good hitter, the Yankees should not sign him because of his age.
An old star should not be an option
At 30 years of age, Alex Bregman, a two-time World Series winner in 2017 and 2022, entered free agency for the first time and his high cost makes teams wonder if he is a good investment, as despite his great performance (26 home runs and 75 RBIs in 145 games in 2024, plus a .272 batting average and .366 on-base percentage) it is not known whether he will be profitable in a few years and whether he is worth the $200 million and long-term deal he is seeking.
Although the ideal is a younger and much cheaper player, McPherson claims that the Yankees should look for people like Venezuelan Marwin Gonzalez, or in other words, a minor league player, yes with age, but also with experience, who is not going to be expensive, but who “has enough energy to have influence” and whose pretensions do not go beyond that.
A ‘low-risk’ tactic that the Yankees have used and one that has paid off handsomely over the years, he said.