Today’s Baseball Players vs Past Baseball Players

Baseball is one of the sports that has stood firm on its longstanding traditions and how the game is played. It’s relatively the same as it was back in 1920-pitcher throws ball, batter hits ball, fielder catches ball. Some of the legends of baseball would think today’s MLB is foreign.

Reasons for changes have been such things like technology, genetics, and finances. These things have changed the men who play baseball.

Steroids, and performance enhancing drugs have obviously led to huge changes in a players performance. Even with this, it’s only a small part when looking at all the differences of past legends compared to today’s stars.

It's a Year-Round Job

In 2019, the average salary for a major league baseball player was $4.36 million, with the minimum salary being $555 thousand per season.

Making this much money out of the gate, allows players today to make this a year-round job with training and workout in the offseason.

With the ability to train year round, it has without question, increased the size and strength of players today as compared to their former legends.

Without question, the ability to train year-round has something to do with the increased size and strength of today's player as compared to those who came before them—but it demands that some questions be asked that simply can never be answered.

It does pose the questions, what if our legends would have been able to train off season and make baseball a year round full time job. How much better would they have been.

Players Have Gotten Bigger, Stronger and Faster

In the last 50 years or so, the average male in the US, in the age range of 20 to 39 has gotten significantly larger. Here is a study from the Centers For Disease Control that was published in 2004:

Even thought this study is very old and includes US males, it does prove that people are getting bigger. It also proves that professional athletes are NOT your average US Male.

ESPN has stated that the average mlb player on a roster stands at 6’1” tall and weighs at minimum 207 pounds.

Baseball Almanac did a study on the size of more than 16,500 players from 1876 through 2012 and found that more than 45% of major leaguers stood between 5'11" and 6'1". Weight-wise, more than 58% of major leaguers weighed between 170 and 199 pounds.

Even though the height of the ball player stand about the same as their previous legends, they are much heavier in weight. This weight differential is in the form of muscle mass and not fat, which quite drastically changes things.

Pitchers Used to Pitch

Back in the day Pitchers Used to Just Pitch. Once they took the mound they never left. Whereas today, when managers see their pitcher hit triple digits in their pitch count, they are on the phone to the bullpen to get the next pitcher warmed up to take the starters place.

Pitching has been the only position to see such drastic changes to how the player is treated. It’s understandable that teams want to protect their pitcher which are multi million dollar investments. Although, this hasn’t always been the case.