The 6 sluggers who found a time machine back to 2009

The year was 2009. Gaming enthusiasts were attached to archaic PS3s. Hip-hop was popular. The Internet was thriving. Cars. Cell phones. It seems like a bygone age, but it was only six years ago. And in this era, we knew who the sluggers were just from their last names. Howard. Teixeira. Braun. Ethier. Fielder. Rod. Then, the years passed, and the talent faded. New sluggers took their place. So it goes.

Except it feels like 2009 again. The Internet is making a comeback. I’ve seen a bunch of cars over the last few days. And those sluggers are productive again. The question of the day, then, is this: Is it 2009 again for these over-30 sluggers? We’ll look at each of them individually.

One of the worst narratives of the Fielder free-agent chase had to do with his weight. While it’s reasonable to wonder about physical fitness for a multi-multi-million dollar commitment, it was so overplayed. He’s gonna break down. He’s gonna break down. There’s no way that body is gonna hold up. As if baseball wasn’t littered with older, fluffier players who look more like bowlers than football players, but still hit dingers. As if David Ortiz is just one giant six-pack. Fielder had been healthy his entire career -- missing six days in camp with a thigh strain was his biggest injury to that point -- so why worry about him breaking down right when he turns 30?

And then he broke down right when he turned 30. After pressing in his first 150 at-bats for his new team, Fielder broke down with a freaky, non-traditional injury: a herniated disc that needed fusion surgery. Do players come back from that? Would he ever be the same? Not just as a player, but as a dude trying to tie his shoes and go swimming.

He’s back, though. He’s the player who was built for Arlington in the first place, a high-average, dinger-swatting machine hitting .361/.410/.577.

Is it 2009 again?
Yeah, I’ll buy it. His walk rate is about a third of what it normally is, but that’s because he’s hitting the ball hard when he swings, which is kind of the point. When the average comes down -- and it will -- the walks will trend back up. He’ll still be a fine player, and his production will more than make up for his defense.

The Dodgers had four outfielders making tens of millions, and a hotshot prospect who needed playing time. Ethier was the likeliest candidate for a trade, considering he wasn’t that expensive. The Dodgers would have to eat a lot of money to move him, but not as much as they would with, say, Matt Kemp. It was something of a minor coup that Ethier made it through the Winter Meetings.

And then the darnedest thing happened: He got playing time and started raking like the old days. Matt Kemp was the one who was traded, and Carl Crawford got hurt. Ethier is hitting .317/.407/.550, and his defense is looking surprisingly solid.

Is it 2009 again?
Sure, why not? Like a lot of these folks, Ethier’s crime was getting hurt and/or having just one bad season. For the last few years, he’s been dealing with ankle problems, knee problems, oblique strains and other knee problems, but in those healthy windows, he was really good. Against right-handers, at least. The presence and production of Scott Van Slyke, though, allows the Dodgers to sit Ethier against lefties (he has just 20 plate appearances against LHP this year), which means the numbers are shinier and the creakier parts of the body get a little rest.

Everyone wins! All the Dodgers needed was a stronger quasi-platoon partner the whole time.

He shouldn’t be on this list, considering he’s younger than the others. He had just one down year. Still, it’s hard to shake the idea that performance-enhancing drugs work like cans of spinach for Popeye, that the effects are immediate and unmistakable, and once they’re gone, the player returns to the land of the mediocre.

Except, we know it doesn’t work like that. Nelson Cruz is presumably clean, right? He probably wouldn’t want to mess around with another huge suspension after the Biogenesis mess, and he’s not playing for another contract. And yet he’s playing like he was injected with Captain America serum, just without the serum. Braun was even better than Cruz. Why wouldn’t he still be good?

Is it 2009 again?
Oh, I guess I did the answer part first, so maybe I should put the intro paragraph here. Regardless, yeah, Braun is probably still good and will be for a couple years yet. At the end of 2013 we looked at Braun’s contract and decided that teams would still line up to pay him. That still applies. He’s probably still excellent.

Man, what a story. From all-time great to greedy mercenary to fallen angel to persecuted anti-hero. Major League Baseball paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for stolen documents, just to help get Rodriguez suspended for a season, which is much longer than the 50-game suspension that most first-time PED offenders get. He got the extra games for lying, being a doofus and being Alex Rodriguez. And it seemed like a year away from the game-- along with his hip problems and age -- were going to make him a shell of himself.

Instead, nope! He’s still good. And like the Braun/Cruz stuff, we have a long history of players who don’t shrivel into Charlie Atlas-before pictures and hit like .080-average weaklings. The real concern was age, but all-time greats like Rodriguez can keep hitting into their late-30s (see Aaron, Hank and Mays, Willie). If you don’t think Rodriguez belongs with those kind of inner-circle Hall of Famers, you’ve forgotten just how good he has always been.

Is it 2009 again?
Probably, sure! The strikeout rate remains elevated from his peak, so it’s not like he’s going to win another MVP, but he’s 39, not 54. He’s old enough for you to be suspicious when he starts slumping, but not old enough to crumble automatically.

Of all the players so far, this is the one that surprises me the most. After an injury-marred 2013, Teixeira was ordinary, at best, last season. He wasn’t hitting for average and he wasn’t getting on base. Even worse, he had a surprising lack of extra-base power for a guy with 22 homers, joining the high-homer, low-double club that’s often filled with the slow, old, and sloppy.

While he’s not the all-time great that Rodriguez is, and probably shouldn’t last until he’s 40, he’s still a former perennial All-Star. Those sorts don’t have to break down in their mid-30s.

Is it 2009 again?
Okay! That is, don’t see any problems with him having a renaissance season. It fits. He has the talent. It was just a matter of his body not being a jerk. He’s apparently a low-average slugger now, but that’s okay. He’s still productive. And while I wanted so very much to credit Yankee Stadium entirely for his comeback, he’s actually hit substantially better on the road this season. He’s probably just good.

Oh. Howard was the original inspiration for this article last week, but I didn’t move quickly enough. His on-base percentage is under .300 again. His average is dropping. He just had a golden sombrero game against the Mets. His WAR is exactly 0.1.

But he’s hit 10 home runs! That’s good. Man, how I’d like him to hit 50 again, just to stop the jokes. His contract was a disaster -- as Marc Normandin points out often, the extension technically started the second his Achillies tendon tore in the 2011 postseason -- but he’s still been a compelling baseball presence for years, and I’ll remember him fondly.

And he’s hit .307/.340/.602 in May. That’s good! That’s excellent! Sure, that came with four walks and 29 strikeouts, but ... well ...

Is it 2009 again?
I’ve expressed optimism with everyone so far, but that’s because I’m nostalgic, not rational. I want age to cut it out, so when it looks like someone has cheated age’s design, it excites me. But all of these players will eventually break down and go away. All of them. Batter morghulis. None of them will be saved. Which means it’s more sensible to predict all of them to fail than it is to predict success for them all season. They’re all doomed.

Sorry, Ryan Howard took me to a bleak place.

Dammit, Ryan Howard.

(The other five will probably be fine, though, if they don’t get hurt. Which they probably will. What did you do to me, Ryan Howard? We were having so much fun.)