Everyone loves a prospect. A prospect is only going to get better, and in our imaginations that trajectory upward can have an impressively steep slope. Veterans on the other hand are only going to go down, down, down. Maybe in flames. Likely the day after their 30th birthday.
Declaring players “washed” in tones of disgust is — well it’s hard not to see it as existential fears of our own mortality — but it’s a popular pastime of the jaded online set. A variation is the intonation of doom whenever a player signs a contract with a term of more than one year at an age over 24 that, “That won’t end well.