Roberto Clemente's Amazing Late Career Defense

Clemente is the only outfielder to have at least 1.0 defensive WAR at age 36 or older (from the Baseball Reference Play Index with a minimum of 50% of games played in the outfield).

In 1971, at age 36, Clemente had 1.8 defensive WAR in 1,081 innings (about 120 games).

In 1972, he had 1.0 defensive WAR in 812 innings (about 90 games).

Only two other players had at least 0.8. Robin Yount had 0.9 in 1993 at age 37. Steve Finley had 0.8 in 2004 at age 39.

If we lower the minimum defensive WAR to 0.5, it was done only 12 times outside of Clemente and only one guy did it more than once, Finley. Finley had 0.6 in 2001 at age 36.

Lonnie Smith had 0.7 at age 36 in 1992 but in only 84 games. Pretty impressive. Stan Javier had 0.8 at age 37 in 2001 in 89 games (he shows up if I set a minimum of 0.75 but not at 0.8).

If we lower the age to 35 but go back to a minimum of 1.0, there are still only 4 cases outside of Clemente. Here they are:

Rk	Player	dWAR	Year	Age	G
1	Willie Mays	2.1	1966	35	152
2	Roberto Clemente	1.8	1971	36	132
3	Devon White	1.5	1998	35	146
4	Jay Payton	1.3	2008	35	127
5	Al Bumbry	1.1	1982	35	150
6	Roberto Clemente	1	1972	37	102

If we look at ages 36-37 combined, Clemente has 2.7 (there must be a rounding issue because it is not 2.8). The only other guy with at least 1.0 is Finley, at 1.0.