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A Player’s “Prime,” and Contracts for Aging Players

A speedster like Michael Bourn saw a steep decline past the age of 30

This week, I was thinking about the worst contracts in baseball. In truth, I have thought about this for quite some time, but inevitably the same names everyone talks about came up…Pujols, Cano, Cabrera, Votto, Sabathia, Zito, Werth, Hamilton, A-Rod, etc., etc. All of them were guys who, in their twenties were the best players in baseball, and in some cases, their teams decided to lock them up for the rest of their careers, as with Cabrera and Votto. However, by the time they signed those extensions or free agent deals, almost all of them were around thirty years old, give or take a year.