Eight-Year-Old Quote From Cubs' Craig Counsell Proves Prescient

It was easy to miss eight years ago when Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell, then the manager of the Milwaukee Brewers, gave a quote to the Southern California News Group about the proliferation of over-35 hitters in the 2000s.

“The PED era fooled us a little bit," Counsell said in reference to the number of players in their late 30s who not only held down major league jobs but set all-time records a generation ago with a little pharmaceutical help.

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Barry Bonds was 40 years old when he won the last of his seven MVP awards in 2004. And while his 762 home runs are often the first evidence cited as evidence of PED use in baseball, he is an all-time outlier. The average age of all major league hitters was 29 or older from 2000-07, dipped below 29 in 2008, and hasn’t reverted since.

The subject came up again June 9, when the Associated Press canvassed players and managers for their take on what’s changed since the early 2000s.

MLB hitters who are 35 or older have combined to provide just 5.6 WAR (Wins Above Replacement, per FanGraphs) through roughly the first third of the 2026 season, according to the AP. In 2003, according to the same report, hitters 35 and older combined for 71.3 WAR.

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Reporter David Brandt identified three reasons for the hastening of hitters’ careers: the rise of analytical decision-making within baseball‘s front offices, the league-wide rise in average pitch speed, and an inflexibility among players to change training techniques from their 20s to their 30s.

Nowhere in the report is the role that PEDs played in helping yesterday’s stars. Some PED advocates (including slugger Mark McGwire) said they took steroids in the belief that it would help them recover faster from injuries as they age. The data - home runs rose from 0.73 per game in 1989 to 1.17 per game in 2000 - suggests PEDs helped hitters thrive on the field, not just stay on it longer.

Eight years later, Counsell’s quote proved prescient. The PED era continues to fool those who take a casual glance at baseball’s record books, expecting an apples-to-apples comparison between the periods before and after mandatory PED suspensions.

Fastball speed and analytics have a role in making life tougher on today’s older hitters. So does drug testing, a fact perhaps not all in the baseball industry are willing or able to admit.

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This story was originally published June 9, 2026 at 8:12 PM.