Looking into Age 40+ Rangers Players

With the signing of Omar Vizquel this week to a minor league contract, it occurred to me that he might have been the second oldest player to sign with the Rangers. The oldest would be Nolan Ryan of course, but I thought Omar might be second, so I decided to look it up.

Broke out baseball-reference.com which lists the age of players in a calendar year. As I started looking into it, I found some interesting stats about the ages of Rangers players. Here's some bullet points (this also assumes Vizquel will play in Arlington in 2009):

• The oldest player period was Nolan Ryan. He was 46 years, roughly 7.5 months when he threw his last pitch in 1993.
• Omar Vizquel was the second oldest signee for a first time Ranger at 41 years, 9 months.
• If Omar Vizquel plays as a Ranger on his birthday, he will be just the third second player to play at age 42 (the first being Charlie Hough, the second being Nolan Ryan). If he wants to overtake Hough, he'd have to play as a Ranger in 2010, which is unlikely, as Hough was 42 yr, 8 mo, 3 weeks old when he played his last game as a Ranger on Sep 28, 1990.
• The number of players who have played in a Rangers uniform at age 40 or older is smaller than you think. Just eleven. I thought it'd be more than that.
• There were a couple years with more than one 40+ Ranger at a time. Not surprisingly, they all involved Nolan Ryan. They were 1992 (Nolan/45 & Brian Downing/41), 1991 (Nolan/44, Downing/40), 1990 (Nolan/43, Hough/42), & 1989 (Nolan/42, Hough/41),.
• The first player ever to play as a Ranger at 40 was Gaylord Perry in 1980 when he was 41.
• When the team was the Senators, there was never a 40+ player.
• The "youngest oldest player" was aged 34. This happened in four seasons (66-68 & 71). Oddly enough, they were all years in Washington. The Rangers have never had a 34 year old be the oldest player
• Some notable names that appeared on my research as "Top 3 Oldest Players for that Year" are.. Minnie Minoso (37, 1963), Don Zimmer (34, 1965), Frank Howard (35, 1972), Rico Carty (33, 1973), Toby Harrah (37, 1986), Goose Gossage (39, 1991), Mickey Tettleton (36, 1997), Mike Morgan (39, 1999), Sammy Sosa (38, 2007)
• Sandy Alomar Sr (34, 1978) & Sandy Alomar Jr (39, 2005) are the only father/son duo on this age list. :)

Here is the complete list of players who have played as a Ranger at age 40 or higher. Again, this assumes that Omar Vizquel will play as a Ranger after April 23rd.

46 - Nolan Ryan (1993)
42 - Omar Vizquel (2009)
42 - Charlie Hough (1990)
41 - Brian Downing (1992)
41 - Gaylord Perry (1980)
40 - Kenny Lofton (2007)
40 - Kenny Rogers (2005)
40 - Andreas Galarraga (2001)
40 - Tony Fossas (1998)
40 - Rick Honeycutt (1994)
40 - Tom Paciorek (1987)

A caveat about the above information. While bbr is the source for my data below, it doesn't seem to take into account the age of a player if his age changed in the season. I just went with the bbr number, as it would have been far too much work to see what the birthdate of every Rangers player was and figure it out that way. :)

Click through to the full story, as I included the complete research data from the entire franchise here. I chose the top 3 ages for each season, because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. :) If you're reading this on a feed reader (or one of those sites that steals rss feeds to make their own stories), then you need to visit my site to get the whole thing.