September is here, and with that comes a flood of baby-faced rookies getting their first taste of “The Show.” Lineups for some teams start to resemble Spring Training tilts, or Triple-A All-Star games. There is youth all around.
The VORG wondered what team put together the youngest lineup ever based on average age on the day of the game. With birthdate info from the Lahman Baseball Database and lineup info from Retrosheet, I calculated the age of each player in the starting lineup of each team for all 170,000+ games (thank you Excel).
On September 27, 1963 the Mets visited Houston to play the Colt .45s. It was the last weekend of the regular season, and both teams were finishing up their sophomore campaigns, having each entered the league in 1962.
Houston put forth the following lineup … nine guys with an average age of 20.0, including future stars Joe Morgan, Jim Wynn and Rusty Staub, and 17-year-old Jay Dahl in his first and only game in the Majors. (Dahl lasted 2.2 innings and yielded seven runs on seven hits.)
| Lineup | AGE |
| Sonny Jackson SS | 19.2 |
| Joe Morgan 2B | 20.0 |
| Jim Wynn CF | 21.5 |
| Rusty Staub 1B | 19.5 |
| Aaron Pointer RF | 21.4 |
| Brock Davis LF | 19.9 |
| Glenn Vaughan 3B | 19.6 |
| Jerry Grote C | 21.0 |
| Jay Dahl P | 17.8 |
On the flip side of the lineup age spectrum, on April 8, 2006 the Giants hosted the Braves, and trotted out a teams that averaged 37.0 years of age, with 30-year-old Pedro Feliz being the youngest of the group:
| Lineup | AGE |
| Omar Vizquel SS | 39.0 |
| Steve Finley CF | 41.1 |
| Moises Alou RF | 39.8 |
| Barry Bonds LF | 41.7 |
| Mark Sweeney 1B | 36.4 |
| Pedro Feliz 3B | 30.9 |
| Todd Greene C | 34.9 |
| Jose Vizcaino 2B | 38.0 |
| Jamey Wright P | 31.3 |
Do you know what the youngest lineup was besides the 9/27/63 Colts? I believe that was a publicity stunt and I’m curious what the youngest “organic” lineup was.