Kaline had 144 and 149 OPS+'s at ages 36 and 37, Clemente 143 and 138. Kaline was not declining at this time. This is simply untrue. He was league average at age 38 and 39, before retiring.
Kaline was a star starting in 1955, at age 20 (he got MVP votes at age 19, but he did not deserve them). Clemente's breakout was 1960, at age 25. Before 1960 his bat was below league average, 6% over in 1956 when he hit .311 with no power and walked 13 times in 147 games, but below every other year. Like Kaline, Clemente blame a regular at a young age (19 for Kaline, 20 for Clemente) but he did not perform for some time. Clemente was a star player for 13 years, Kaline 18. It is not likely Clemente was going to age so well to turn this into an advantage for him.
If we are going to give Clemente credit for fantasy years that did not happen on the backend, we should give credit to Kaline for real, actual years on the front end.
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