George Springer authored one of the great comeback stories of the 2025 season.
Entering the campaign, he was projected to be a drag on the Toronto Blue Jays. He was entering his age-35 season, coming off consecutive years of decline, which were the worst two full seasons of his career.
What did Springer do? He responded with the second-best year-over-year improvement among players to record at least 400 plate appearances in 2024 and 2025 (1.1 fWAR in 2024 to 5.2 fWAR last season). Only the Royals’ Maikel Garcia enjoyed more growth.
Springer eclipsed 30 homers for the first time since 2019, and he even hit .300 (.309) for the first time in his career. He squared up pitches with regularity, posting the best barrel rate of his career and matching his top exit velocity mark. It was skill growth supported by a bat-speed spike, which like most hitting attributes, typically declines with age.
Springer’s average competitive swing traveled at 73.7 mph last season, ranking in the 73rd percentile, after posting a 71.9 mph average swing in 2024 that ranked in the 52nd percentile.
While the Blue Jays as a whole enjoyed much internal improvement under first-year hitting coach David Popkins, Springer’s season was the most surprising.
Father Time remains undefeated, but there are on occasion players who fight back against the aging curve and surprise us with resurgent seasons in their mid-30s.
We wondered who could be the next Springer in 2026?
To be considered, a candidate had to be in his 30s, and ideally his mid-30s.
They had to have played at a star-level performance recently like Springer had in 2022, and fallen off to a level that challenged their status as a regular. (In other words, we were not interested in a superstar who might shed WAR to move from an MVP to merely star level.)
For reference, Springer averaged 3.8 WAR from 2015-22, before falling to 1.9 and 1.1 marks in full seasons 2022 and 2023.
Let’s look for some candidates.
There were 48 hitters who declined by at least 1 fWAR from 2024 to last season, and who also recorded at least 400 plate appearances in each season. These are players whose declines were not tied to missing most of a season to injury.
When we whittle down the list by age and identify players who declined from star levels to regular status or less, we find eight candidates who meet the criteria.
Who among them is the best bet to be the next Springer? Let’s explore:
Betts was still a quality regular last year (3.4 fWAR), but he was not a star, and the campaign marked the second straight year of decline from his 7.6 fWAR campaign in 2023.
But under the hood he didn’t look that much different.
His strikeout rate actually declined to 10.3%, and his rate of squaring up pitches remained at the 100th percentile. His rare contact ability remains intact. His bat speed did not decline either, holding steady at 69 mph.
For Betts to return to superstar status, it’s a matter of some better luck and returning his bat path to previous levels when he was more adept at pulling fly balls. Working in his favor is he has always shown willingness to look for ways to improve, to not be content, and he stills owns elite athleticism. He’s perhaps the strongest candidate for a Springer-like rebound in 2026.
Recall, he also became a full-time shortstop last season, at age 32, and perhaps that weighed on his bat.
The Mets’ deal to acquire Semien suggests they believe there is bounce-back potential for a player with three years remaining on his deal.
Semien is regarded as one of the hardest-working, highest-baseball-IQ players in the game. If anyone is going to work to defy an aging curve it’s Semien.
Semien’s range (92nd percentile) and sprint speed (81 percentile) remain strong. His average exit velocity was slightly improved last year. If he can return his BABIP to nearer his career average (.280) after back-to-back seasons at (.250), there is batting-average and on-base upside. Semien enjoys some Springer 2025 potential.
There’s a drop-off to the third player on the list.
Altuve’s fall-off is not as dramatic as Springer’s was. It’s more gradual. But it’s been significant nonetheless, falling from status as a player who averaged 6.4 fWAR between 2021-23 to a 2.1 fWAR mark this past season, his third straight season of decline.
And it’s not just his offensive efficiency trending down (164 wRC in 2022, 154 in 2023, 127 in 2014, 113 last season) but also his baserunning and defense.
Speed and defense are skills that rarely improve with age.
Altuve, a 70th percentile sprint speed runner as recently as 2022, landed in the 36th percentile last year. His defensive range is diminished.
The good news for the Astros? Altuve remains an elite bat-to-ball hitter, who elevated his offensive profile by pulling balls into the Crawford Boxes. As long as those skills remain intact he can be a quality regular, but it’s difficult to see him returning to elite, all-around form.
For the first time since 2019, Hernández’s Statcast page featured a lot of blue related to contact quality.
While his 2025 drop-off — .840 OPS to .738 in 2025, 3.4 fWAR to 0.6 — wasn’t tied to a dramatic increase in whiffs, or a steep decline in bat speed — though there was some — what’s troubling is his pitchers attacked him at a career-high rate in the zone (54.8% compared to his 50.9% career average), and Hernández didn’t respond. He took more called strikes, walked at his lowest rate of his career (4.8%), and did less damage even though he was challenged more often. This suggests a player who is not seeing the ball well, and visual acuity decline is a big reason why hitters decline in their 30s.
Most power skills don’t improve with age, and Hernández doesn’t have as diverse a skill set as Springer making for a narrower path to rebound.
Arenado has already produced his own Springer-like season.
He produced a career-best 149 wRC+ in 2022 at age 31 (7 fWAR season) after spending an offseason focused on a bat-speed training regimen he learned working with Driveline Baseball. Arenado came to Driveline Baseball for assessment late in the 2025 season and plans to again focus on bat-speed training.
One of the important lessons from Springer’s 2025 season — and Arenado’s 2022 — is that hitters have agency. They can make an effort to defy the aging curve a bit longer by focusing on skills like adding bat speed or improving bat path, etc. Springer did not just enjoy random statistical variation in 2025 — he actively sought to improve his skills under Popkins. The benefits can be enormous. Arenado’s glove remains above average, so if he gets more from his bat he could add significant performance value.
One of the most consistent hitters in the game from 2022-24 (wRC+ marks of 122, 120, 120, fWAR totals of 3.9, 3.9 and 3.1), Walker fell off in both defensive and offensive inefficiency. While a number of his underlying skills remain strong, this is another aging corner bat — a player cohort that does not age well.
On one hand, Ozuna is just a year removed from an elite offensive season and he did play through a hip injury last season that affected him.
On the other hand, Ozuna is an aging bat-only player making him riskier to invest in. And even if Ozuna enters the spring healthy, that does not guarantee a bounceback.
Jeff Zimmerman’s research shows players returning from playing through an injury often fall short of the Steamer projection model’s forecasts for their following seasons by about 30 OPS points on average. Ozuna is projected for a .776 OPS by Steamer in 2026.
Perez was again a lineup fixture, playing 155 games and slugging 30 home runs. But he’s become a one-dimensional slugger with a career-low .236 batting average, a sub 5% walk rate and no baserunning value. All in all, that makes for a below-average hitter. And defensively by some measures, like DRS (-15), he had his worst season with the glove.
He’s been near replacement level in three of his last four years (0.8 fWAR in 2022, -0.3 fWAR in 2023 and 0.5 fWAR last season). It’s unlikely Perez has a major rebound.
