Exactly. This is why, when Beane was already clearly sensing the lack of market for older players developing in the coincidence of last year’s economy and baseball free agent trends, he struck out. He signed Jason Giambi, Orlando Cabrera, and Nomar Garciaparra, but all three were, to different degrees, ineffective. Garciaparra succumbed to injury again, and eventually retired. Giambi was traded to be simply a bench player (and performed well in that limited role). Cabrera seemed to help the Twins after being traded, but he’s now still on the market because of declining defense (and not such a hot bat either). So you might strike gold, but as others have said above, it’s different from measurable or observable skills and stats like OBP, walk rate, UZR/other defensive metrics, etc. Age and its effects on ability can’t be uniformly quantified. Of course, we’re not talking about age itself as the inefficiently valued commodity. But I’m not so sure teams really are being overcautious. Surely in some cases, they are, but I think part of it is just the economy and the fact that part of what usually declines with age is defensive ability, which coincides with the move in recent years toward the valuation of defense.

The media has this bad habit of building guys up and then tearing them down got the very same behavior.

They’ll praise a player for saying they’ll play until they pull the unifo off of them … And then rip em for when they carry out that promise.

They also will say that a guy should retire when they can “finish on top” and then say they should keep playing as long as they can produce, sometimes even saying they “owe it to the fans”.

It must be fun to play God in other peoples’ lives … Another habit the media/fans seem to have.