As 2023 Comes to a Close, the Number of 2000s Players Continues to Rapidly Decrease

Almost exactly two years ago, I made note of a shocking trend: we were losing 2000s players at an alarming rate. And in the short time since the 2023 season ended, we’ve seen a number of high-profile retirements, which has made me want to look into the matter again.

But first, I wanted to quickly remind everyone of some basics. First, when I refer to “2000s Players”, I’m of course talking about players who debuted between 2000 to 2009, not just “any players who have debuted since 2000”. This topic is kind of a follow-up to something I looked at almost a decade ago, trying to predict who would be the final active player from the 1990s. Once we ran out of 1990s players, it seemed natural to move on to the next decade, so I figured I’d shelve the issue until around 2024 or so.

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Except when Buster Posey announced his surprise retirement back in 2021, I began poking around in Baseball-Reference and realized that the topic was coming up on us much quicker than I ever expected. You see, historically, “The Last Active Player from a Decade” has been shockingly predictable:


Last Player from the 1920s: Satchel Paige made it to 1965 if you count his comeback publicity stunt; if you only count regular players, Paige tied with Bobo Newsom (retired 1953)
Last Player from the 1930s: Early Wynn (1963)
Last Player from the 1940s: Minnie Miñoso (1980) if you count his comeback publicity stunts, otherwise Willie Mays (1973)
Last Player from the 1950s: Jim Kaat (1983)
Last Player from the 1960s: Carlton Fisk and Nolan Ryan (1993)
Last Player from the 1970s: Rickey Henderson and Jesse Orosco (2003)
Last Player from the 1980s: Jamie Moyer and Omar Vizquel (2012)


Maybe it’s just me, but I find that stability hilarious: for six straight decades, the last active player would hang up their cleats exactly 24 years after the decade ended. The 1980s saw that slip to 23 years, which is maybe a little unusual, but ultimately not really a meaningful difference.

…Except that, with the benefit of hindsight, maybe it was a sign of things to come? After all of that, our final 1990s players wound up being Adrián Beltré and Bartolo Colon, who both called it quits* after the 2018 season, or five years early if you go by that 24-year rule.

*Technically, Colon would go play in the Mexican League in 2021, but his MLB days ended in 2018.

And if you were hoping that 2000s players might prove to be a rebound here, you’re probably going to be disappointed; for as aggressive as the last decade was at pushing 1990s players out of the league, things are only looking worse for 2000s players this decade. In fact, we’ve generally been a year ahead of the already-accelerated schedule that decade was on:

Buster Posey's Retirement Accentuates the Fast-Shrinking Number of 2000s Players

I knew there were going to be a lot of shocking moves this winter, but I certainly didn’t predict Buster Posey retiring on the first official day of the offseason. The former MVP was set to start his thirteenth season next year just after his 35th birthday, but the longtime Giants catcher instead decided to turn down the option year on his contract, even after San Francisco picked it up. It’s especially surprising given how strong his 2021 season was (particularly after sitting out the 2020 campaign) but there’s something to be said for going out on a high note.

But perhaps the most surprising aspect, for me at least, was realizing that Posey was part of a dying breed: players who debuted in the 2000s.* Technically, Posey only played in seven games in the 2009 season, but it counts, and we need all the help we can get in this category. It doesn’t feel like it should be that rare quite yet; it wasn’t that long ago.

*“2000s” here refers to the first decade after 2000, which doesn’t have as clear a name as the 2010s or 2020s. Thus, I’ll just be sticking with “2000s” or “‘00s” for this piece.

And yet, as of 2021, MLB is already down in the double digits when it comes to players from the ‘00s who received any playing time. That feels a little shocking, right? I’m not alone here? We aren’t that far into the following decade yet, it’s still only 2021. This seemed like it was something worth looking into. After all, I have experience here; I wrote something a few years ago looking at who would be the final player from the 1990s (that answer ended up being a tie between Adrian Beltre and Bartolo Colon, by the way; both of them made it to 2018 in the Majors, although Colon continues playing internationally). How does the situation now compare to what I saw then?

I’ll need to do some adjusting, of course, since my last piece was in 2014, closer to the middle of the decade. But our 2021 total still feels abnormally low; going by a search on Baseball-Reference, there are only 75 active players who debuted in the 2000s. And even that feels like a generous ruling, given that the search turns up players who didn’t play in 2021 for a variety of reasons (including injuries like Justin Verlander and Cole Hamels, players who sat out like Homer Bailey and Chris Davis, as well as the suspended Robinson Cano). Even if you expand the search to include players who retired during the 2021 season but were active at some point, you pick up Jordan Zimmermann (2 games with the Brewers) and Jay Bruce (10 games with the Yankees), but that still only brings us to 77 ‘00s players in the 2021 season.

In comparison, there were still over 100 players from the 1990s still active for the 2011 season: 105 just counting players who debuted in 1990 or later, plus 1980s debuts Jamie Moyer and Omar Vizquel, who both lasted until the 2012 season. So it’s not just my memory, we do appear to be losing 2000s players faster than we did 1990s players (and 1980s ones, apparently?).

With Chase Utley's Retirement Announcement, an Early Look at His Cooperstown Case

Chase Utley announced on Friday that 2018 would be his last season, bringing his fantastic sixteen-year career to a close. Naturally, because I’m me, I decided to write about his Hall of Fame chances (and besides, the induction ceremony is coming up soon anyway, so it’s doubly-relevant!). Writing too-early Hall of Fame campaign pieces is kind of my thing.

I think it’s going to be pretty obvious where I fall on this issue, seeing as Utley makes regular appearances in my Future Hall of Fame pieces. But those are wide focuses that don’t allow me much time with each individual player, so let’s take a minute for me to break down why I think Chase Utley is a Hall of Famer in platonic sense, even if I think its likely voters will fail to make him one in the literal sense.

It’s pretty easy to see why the BBWAA would miss on him: he just doesn’t have the counting numbers, and for as much as the Hall claims to consider peak performance in addition to career totals, all evidence on the matter shows they have a harder time weighing good peaks equally to sustained success. The early-2000s Phillies were overly-cautious with their prospects, so Utley didn’t see a full season in the bigs until 2005 when he was already 26. There’s some pretty compelling arguments they waited a little too long there (Utley posted a 132 OPS+ and 2.3 WAR in 2004 in just 94 games, then had an MVP-type year the next season), but what’s done is done.

As a result of that decision, Utley’s career totals look nice but not overwhelming, with (to date) 259 homers, 153 stolen bases, 1025 RBI, and 1880 hits. That last number is probably the most damning to his cause; no position player to debut since the 1950s has made it to Cooperstown with less than 2000 hits. Utley would need to reach the 150 hit mark this year to make it to 2000, and he’s done that just once since 2009.

Of course, by WAR and other value-based stats, he looks like a no-brainer. Fangraphs has him at 63.2 WAR, twelfth all-time among second basemen. Baseball-Reference’s version is pretty similar, putting Utley at 65.6 and fourteenth overall. Something like JAWS, which takes peak into account, also comes out favorably for Chase; his 57.4 mark is just above the Hall average for the position, 57.0. And what’s more, he stacks up pretty well to the most recent Hall inductees in value (2006 inductee Frank Grant excluded due to incomplete Negro League stats):

Who Will Be the Last Active Player from the 1990s?

The offseason is the time for indulging in strange, off-the-wall investigations. And so, I will take this opportunity to explore a question that occurred to me during the regular season: who will be the last active player who debuted in the 1990s?

I really wish I remember what inspired this question, but the context is lost to the sands of time, as all the remains is a note on my “To Do” list that says “WHO WILL BE THE LAST PLAYER FROM THE ‘90s?” Apparently, I was really excited about it when it occurred to me, and that’s all that really matters.

With that, I headed to Baseball-Reference’s Play Index to find out who all was left from the ‘90s. The details of my search were pretty simple: sort by ascending year of debut, active players with last season 2013 or later. I thought about setting final season to 2014 or later, but I figured there might be a few cases of players who were active in 2014 but couldn’t play due to, say, injury, or steroid suspension.

With those criteria set, I got a list of 30 players who fit the criteria. However, I had to cull the list even more, as some of the results were no longer possibilities. Derek Jeter, Paul Konerko, Bobby Abreu, Eric Chavez, Ryan Dempster, and Alfonso Soriano have all announced their retirements. I suppose comeback tours are all possible, but I don’t know that we should be betting on them happening. That leaves us with 24 names.

Roy Oswalt's Retirement and the Raised Bar for Hall of Fame Pitchers

I’m going to be covering some older news here, so apologies if you were looking for breaking news. Unfortunately, real life has kept me busy lately; I was determined to write this, though.

Roy Oswalt retired this offseason, as you may well know. When I heard this, I went through my traditional reaction, which was to look at Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference and reflect on his career. He had quite the run of dominance; from his 2001 debut year to 2007, he threw 1413.1 innings with 1170 Ks and a 143 ERA+, as well as three All-Star Game selections and five Top-5 Cy Young finishes.

For his career, he managed a 163-102 record with a 3.36 ERA in 2245.1 innings and 1852 strikeouts against only 486 unintentional walks. That all translates to a 127 ERA+, 49.9 rWAR, and 49.7 fWAR. All in all, pretty solid stuff. He’s certainly going to be well-remembered in Houston (I can’t imagine his number 44 remaining in circulation with the Astros for very much longer given their history and his talent), but he’s probably not going to Cooperstown without paying for a ticket.

Except there’s one other career value that I like to check: Hall Rating. And according to Adam Darowski’s metric, Oswalt actually clears the Hall of Stats bar. Granted, it’s just barely, with a 104 rating. And given the fluid nature of the Hall of Stats, combined with his proximity to the border, it’s no guarantee that he’ll make the Hall of Stats come 2019 (since they try and match the size of the Hall of Fame in size and keep the worst member as 100, the formula for Hall Rating shifts depending on voters). But he’s pretty much on track-it looks like 24 people would have to get the boot before he would slip below 100.

Roy Halladay's Retirement and Cooperstown

I wanted to explain my awards ballot, but a faulty computer and other commitments have eaten into my opportunities to do that. So rather than dwell on older news, I figured that I may as well move on to newer things, especially since Hall of Fame season is coming up. And so, this piece will be about the Hall of Fame.

Not the newly-elected Veterans Committee picks, though. As I wrote last time, all three were deserving, but they only represented about half (or less) of the deserving people on the ballot. Besides, I would just rehash old ground (such as, why was there a vote cap, or why were managers competing with executive and players for induction, or who exactly picked those players anyway). No, I’m going to start looking forward, to recently-retired Roy Halladay’s case. What will his debate look like come late 2018?

Let’s start like most Hall voters probably will, with pitching wins. Halladay had 203 of them, a rather low total for the traditionally wins-centric BBWAA. 203 ties him with Lew Burdette, Silver King, and Jack Stivetts, not the biggest bunch of names. Right above him are Orel Hershiser and Al Orth, right below him are Charlie Root and Hall member Rube Marquard. Marquard isn’t exactly the best Hall of Famer to stake your case on, though.

Winning Percentage paints him a lot better-Halladay is 17th all-time. Everyone above him with as many seasons pitched is in Cooperstown or will be. Pedro Martinez is the will be, in this case, and he makes for a pretty good comp, career-length-wise, and both had a similarly low amount of wins. Pedro was better, but he’ll probably serve as an indicator of how Doc’s case will fare, if nothing else.

Let’s move from the ridiculous to the only kind of dumb; every pitcher with three or more Cy Young Awards is in the Hall (or is Roger Clemens). Doc has two. What has that meant historically? His fellow two-Cy pitchers and their Hall verdict:

Scott Rolen: Reflecting on an All-Time Great

There hasn’t been an official announcement yet, but each day further along the season gets, the less likely it gets that Scott Rolen will play in 2013. He was flip-flopping on whether to hang his cleats up all winter, with even the last news from him being uncertain (although leaning towards retirement). Unless the Dodgers or some other team realizes that their third base hole is worse than they thought midseason, he’ll probably be sitting this year out. It is somewhat fitting though, if upsetting, that one of the best and most underrated players ever can’t even be the best third baseman to retire this season.

Jason Kendall Retires

Jason Kendall never got an MVP vote.

Of course, you may be saying. Kendall was an awful hitter his past few seasons. He hasn’t even had an OPS+ over 100 since the Curse of the Bambino was still a thing. The Royals signed him-that alone is pretty damning. And plenty of players have never gotten an MVP vote. A vast majority of the people that play in the Major Leagues never get an MVP vote. Sure, sometimes the voters act silly and the next thing you know, Delmon Young finishes in the top 10. And sometimes, you see an oddball down-ballot choice. Remember Jeremy Affeldt's MVP campaign? Neither does Jeremy Affeldt, but it apparently happened back in 2009. But, overall, not receiving any MVP votes is not a huge deal. But Jason Kendall might be the best player to never get an MVP vote.

Injuries and the End

So, a spate of major injuries has hit some of the stars of the 2000s as of late, particularly stars associated with the NL Central. Kerry Wood started by retiring due to his injuries. Scott Rolen and Lance Berkman have since come down with major, career-threatening injuries. This seemed to stir some thoughts and memories in me, so I figured now would be a good time to reflect on them as players.

First, Wood. As a Cardinals fan, I remember being terrified of him back in 2003 or so. Back then, the Astros, Cubs, and Cardinals always struck me as the big three of the NL Central, which I suppose makes it fitting that I’m covering a representative from each team now. Wood and Prior were their two aces, something it felt like the Cardinals lacked even one of. (I recall Matt Morris being the Cards’ number 1 at the time, but I remember him being an ace-type pitcher for much longer than he was even good.)