More than a year ago, I wrote this post lamenting the retirements of all the athletes who were active the moment I began following sports. Of the last remaining baseball players I had identified, only two remain; Omar Vizquel, who is expected to play a utility role for the Jays, and Jamie Moyer, of all people, whom ESPN reports has won a rotation spot with the Rockies at the age of 49. Let's pause for a second to reflect on how unusual this is; of all the players who were active in 1992, who would have guessed that one of the two remaining in 2012 would be a then-30-year-old?
So now Moyer joins a team that's younger than he is, though that's not hard to do at this point. He is actually older than nine franchises other than the Rockies: the Brewers, Rays, Jays, Royals, Mariners, Marlins, Nationals, Diamondbacks, and Padres. In one year he can add the Mets and Astros to that list; if he manages to hang around for two more years, he'll add the Angels and Rangers on top of them.
Generally spotty playing time complicates prognostication, but given a few more seasons, Moyer has a chance at 300 wins. That's more a function of longevity rather than sustained excellence, though - it will be interesting to see what the HoF voters do if he does finish at 300. Not to be outdone, Vizquel himself stands reasonably close (159 short) to the other traditional HoF threshold of 3,000 hits, so we may not even need to wait until Johnny Damon retires to test the "statistical threshold" theory of HoF voting.
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