I also believe that in the vast majority of cases, players don’t _continue_ playing because of the money either. A top starter hanging on for a couple extra years is going to add what, maybe $8M to a $100M+ fortune he’s amassed earlier? They do it because they’re competitors and because they love the game. I could see a fringe major leaguer sticking it out in hopes of making $500K for a few seasons, but not the best pitchers in ML history.

Now you have guys like Pavano making $10 million a year six years into their career. Roger didn’t get that much until 2001.

Obviously it’s all relative, it’s a lot of money. But guys now can get to $50 million in career salary very quickly. Clemens, Maddux, Glavine, Wells, did’t get there until late in their careers. So they have the incentive to stick around as long as they can and rake it in.

A guy who breaks in today, say Phil Hughes, is he going to pitch until he’s 44 or 45? I don’t think so because by the time he’s 35, he’s going to have made a huge amount of money.

Look at Andy Pettitte. He wanted to retire last season. Roy Oswalt talks all the time about wanting to work on his farm.

You said: “With the money players make now, the incentive to pitch that many years will be missing.”

Hasn’t recent history shown that the opposite might actually be true – that some players will stick around and keep playing (presumably, at least in part, because they make millions of dollars each year that they stay in MLB)? There are a lot of 40-something players right now… San Francisco practically fields a team of them (not to mention the Yanks’ winning pitcher last night).

Huh?