Nelson Cruz is at it again. Through the early part of the 2021 season, Cruz is among the leaders in home runs, slugging percentage, and wRC+, (an offensive metric that accounts for league and ballpark effects where 100 is league average, 120 is 20 percent better than average, etc.).
Cruz is hitting .328/.369/.672 through Saturday, April 24. Among qualifying hitters, he ranks tenth in baseball with a 186 wRC+, which is also the highest of his career. The top of the wRC+ leaderboard features Mike Trout, Ronald Acuña Jr., Yermín Mercedes, J.D. Martinez, Matt Olson, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. When Cruz signed with the New York Mets as a 17-year-old amateur free agent out of the Dominican Republic in February of 1998, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had not been born yet and Ronald Acuña Jr. was a little over a year old. Now the old man is right there on the leaderboard with those two young stars.
This is not new for Cruz. He’s one of the best “old” hitters in baseball history and he seems to be getting better as he gets older. It wasn’t always like this for Cruz. After signing with the Mets back in 1998, he was later traded to Oakland, then to Milwaukee, where he made his major league debut before being traded to Texas. He was an above average hitter with the Rangers from 2008 to 2013, but not yet the slugger we’ve come to know and love. He also served a 50-game suspension in his final year with Texas when he was one of 12 players suspended by MLB as part of the Biogenesis drug case. It was the largest mass suspension in baseball history and included Alex Rodriguez, Jhonny Peralta, Everth Cabrera, Francisco Cervelli, and Jesus Montero, among others.
Coming off the PED suspension, Cruz signed a one-year, $8-million deal with the Baltimore Orioles that would prove to be an incredible bargain when he hit 40 homers and drove in 108 runs. That earned him a four-year, $57-million contract with the Seattle Mariners, which some in the analytics community thought was a tremendous overpay. The linked article included a projection for Cruz in the first year of his deal with the Mariners: 119 wRC+. Instead, he launched a career-best 44 homers and had a 158 wRC+. Rather than being a tremendous overpay, Cruz more than earned his keep in his four years with the Mariners.
Heading into his age-38 season, Cruz signed a two-year, $26-million deal with the Twins prior to the 2019 season, then re-upped with them before this year for another $13 million. He’s been a bargain in each of his free agent years and once again looks like a bargain for the Twins this season with his excellent production at the dish in the early-going. He’s also a well-respected teammate and clubhouse leader.
There are different ways to look at the greatness of Nelson Cruz in his older years. Among his contemporaries over the last seven-plus seasons, only Mike Trout has been a better hitter.
Then there’s a more historical look—comparing Cruz with other hitters age 33 and older in their careers. That 149 wRC+ for Cruz ranks 13th in baseball history for players age 33 and older with more than 2,000 plate appearances. On this list, he’s surrounded by some of the greatest players who ever played the game, including Edgar Martinez, Roberto Clemente, Mel Ott, and Willie Stargell.
Cruz has ascended to an even higher level beginning with his age-38 season in 2019. In his first season with the Twins, he had a 163 wRC+, which was the 5th-best hitting season since 1901 for a 38-year-old with 500 or more playing appearances. He repeated the feat in the shortened 2020 season, finishing with the 5th-best hitting season (164 wRC+) for a 39-year-old with 200 or more plate appearances. Over these two seasons, the same-age players on the leaderboards with Cruz include Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth, Jim Thome, and Hank Aaron. That’s the company Cruz has kept as an older hitter.
Fuego y Frio
Not only is it unusual for an older player to hit the way Cruz is hitting, it’s unusual for a 40-plus player to even get regular at-bats in the major leagues. Since 1961, there have been 33 position players age 40 and older with 500 or more plate appearances in a season. That’s about one every two seasons. It’s been even more rare lately. Since 2008, there have been just three position players 40 or older with at least 500 plate appearances in a season—2014 Derek Jeter (634 PA, 75 wRC+), 2016 David Ortiz (626 PA, 163 wRC+), and 2017 Carlos Beltran (509 PA, 76 wRC+).
Last year, two position players age 40 or older had at least one plate appearance in the major leagues: Erik Kratz (30 PA) and Albert Pujols (163 PA). In his limited time, Kratz hit .321/.367/.393, good for a 112 wRC+. Pujols, on the other hand, continued his late-career trend of below-average hitting (.224/.270/.395, 77 wRC+).
Longtime baseball fans know that Albert Pujols is a first-ballot Hall of Famer. He has over 3,000 hits, more than 600 home runs, and is in the upper echelon of first basemen, in the conversation for best ever along with Lou Gehrig. But imagine what someone who was born around 2000 and became a die-hard baseball fan as a teenager might think of Albert Pujols versus Nelson Cruz. For this fan, there’s no comparison—Nelson Cruz has been a stud and Albert Pujols has been a dud.
Let’s say our hypothetical fan became aware of baseball as a 14-year-old in 2014 and has followed the careers of Cruz and Pujols ever since. They would see Cruz as a well above-average hitter, second-best in baseball to Mike Trout in wRC+, while Pujols has spent the last five seasons as a below-average hitter and in the same ballpark as Jason Heyward and Yonder Alonso in wRC+ since 2014.
From 2014-2021
Nelson Cruz: 955 G, 4032 PA, 1022 H, 559 R, 226 HR, 677 RBI, .287/.363/.559, 149 wRC+
Albert Pujols: 919 G, 3904 PA, 901 H, 424 R, 173 HR, 611 RBI, .252/.305/.437, 100 wRC+
Let’s not dwell on Pujols, though. This is a Nelson Cruz appreciation piece. Cruz is already off to a terrific start to his age-40 season, but there’s plenty of season left. He’ll have to repeat his 2019/2020 seasons to match David Ortiz as the best 40-year-old hitter ever. Ortiz had a 163 wRC+ at the age of 40 in 2016. Second on the list is Willie Mays (157 wRC+ as a 40-year-old in 1971), then Edgar Martinez (142 wRC+ in 2003). Cruz may not finish at those heights, but a top-5 finish in wRC+ for 40-year-olds is within his reach.
Another milestone within reach is the record for home runs by a 40-year-old, which is currently held by David Ortiz in that 2016 season. Ortiz launched 38 big flies in 2016, which topped the previous record of 34 set by Darrell Evans in 1987. Dave Winfield is third on the list, with 26. Cruz has six dingers in the Minnesota Twins’ first 19 games and is projected by the FanGraphs Depth Charts to hit 32 more, which would equal the record set by Ortiz. That will be something to watch for in late September.
