Baseball is a young man\u2019s game. And all who play it at the major league level are young; at least compared to the members of other professions. There are doctors in their seventies; there are no shortstops at that age outside of Old Timer\u2019s Day. But age is relative; while none of the boys of summer are actually boys, some are closer to their boyhood than others.<\/p>\n
Most of the 2026 Phillies are not particularly close to theirs. The missed signing of Bo Bichette, youthful at 27, and the resigning of J.T. Realmuto for his age 35, 36, and 37 seasons have dragged this fact, never secret but not pleasant to discuss, into the circle of conversation. With Cody Bellinger returning to the Bronx, the last of the big free agent bats is off the board, and there isn\u2019t much else to talk about beyond the Phillies\u2019 aging. There\u2019s discussion of whether or not it makes sense to run it back, (or whether or not what the Phillies are doing counts as running it back), and discussion of whether or not Bryce Harper can be elite again. But these are really all variations on the same theme. Namely, that the Phillies are getting older, and thus weaker and wearier. The fans, too, are getting older, at precisely the same pace, and there is a distinct threadbareness to the hopes that many of the Philadelphia faithful will be bringing to the Bank with them this season.<\/p>\n
There are so very many movies in which a hero past his prime is dragged out of retirement for that one last job, with the inevitable accompanying clich\u00e9\u2014 he\u2019s getting too old for this s**t. There is a special appeal to seeing the aged hero defy the odds, proving the value of his experience. There\u2019s a weighty sense of nostalgia to watching the greying hero retrace his steps. Would John Wick be nearly as beloved if he were a fresh faced novice to assassination? The aging hero is often especially appealing to the audience. The athletic world is an exception.<\/p>\n
That makes perfect sense: aging saps the skills needed to succeed as a professional athlete, and the accompanying increase in wisdom and experience does not come close to counterbalancing it. Add in the fact that the aging of our favorite players reminds us of our own senescence, and you have an ugly concoction. We are able to enjoy the aging of our favorites to some degree when they are close to a milestone, with the accumulation of their statistics adding a happy sense of history to the accumulation of the years. And we are able to enjoy it when the player takes their farewell tour, lending a gauzy cloak of nostalgia and sentiment to the passage of time. But those are brief blips on the aging curve, and the rest of the ride is not terribly enjoyable.<\/p>\n
Some people find humor in it; an extremely human reaction to dread. The 1983 Phillies, an older bunch, were nicknamed the Wheeze Kids for their age, a play on the Whiz Kids from a generation prior. Mike Schmidt, a target of the joke at 33 (not young, but nearly a decade younger than Pete Rose was), didn\u2019t find it very funny. \u201cTo call a team like this the Wheeze Kids, well, all I can say is it\u2019s pathetic. A real lack of class\u201d. 1<\/p>\n
The mean age of the 9 position players on that team who played the most was 31.77. Go for the median to remove the outliers (the ancient Pete Rose at 42, and the fresh-from-the-nursery Von Hayes at 24), and it\u2019s 30.<\/p>\n
If we do the same with the projected starting lineup for this year\u2019s Phillies, it\u2019s a mean of 30.44 . Younger than the Wheezers. But if we do it by median, it\u2019s 33. The 2026 Phillies likely won\u2019t have a nickname like their 1983 predecessors\u2014 we are many decades past the prime era of nicknames in the national pastime\u2014, but will face a similar problem. They are not as old as they will be, and they are not decrepit. But they are getting older. It is hard to remember Bryce Harper as the brash youngster of \u201cclown question, bro\u201d, controversy. That is partially due to his emotional maturation, his hard-earned self-reinvention as a Philadelphia statesman. But it is also because 2012 was a long time ago.<\/p>\n
There is some hope for youth from the farm system. Justin Crawford will likely break camp with the team. Andrew Painter will likely debut this season. Aidan Miller waits in the wings. But for the moment, the Phils are an older bunch. That need not be cause for despair. Advanced age, as the 1983 Phillies (for Schmidt\u2019s sake, we\u2019ll eschew the nom de guerre) proved, does not preclude success. It is a decided disadvantage. But it is not necessarily decisive.<\/p>\n