I absolutely agree

I don't buy into that stuff for a second. The theory that is bandied about that pitchers weren't really giving it their all just doesn't make any sense to me. Somehow, they weren't as competitive back then? Come on! Where is the evidence for that? And to compare progressive track and field records to pitching performances to infer that they have progressed as well doesn't make much sense either.

It feels to me like the notion that baseball is somehow unique and exempt from the patterns we see in other sports is a romantic one. Just my opinion. Athletes get better over time and I don't see baseball as an exception.

These were The tracks that Jesse Owens and all those before the 1960’s ran on…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinder_track

These were his shoes, the track and the [lack of] starting blocks(see attached images)

I get that you hold the eternal contrarian POV Peter but you are being silly comparing Jesse Owens times directly to a modern High Schooler.

Baseball was a global sport from the beginning, South American baseball roots go back nearly as far as american. Same with Japan.
So you're wrong there.

I would almost bet everything I own in saying 100 years ago there were more people playing baseball than today. Photos and postcards from literally every corner of north and south america and Japan prove this. Cards as well. You're talking company baseball teams across the country are the norm. When is the last time you've seen a company baseball team? Never in this lifetime. Navy ships had teams, Army bases had teams, hell they had a field on Alcatraz (granted they used a softball). You could travel across the United States on a train and get off anywhere inhabited and have a very high chance of catching a game, if not that day the next.

Baseball essentially isn't played in India, China (The majority of the population rise being these two countries.) Africa or Much of Europe. So, well over half of the world doesn't even have a field, aside from maybe some big cities. Certainly nothing local.

Not sure what integration has to do with my statement, just because they were on all black teams doesn't mean they weren't equally as capable of beating players today.

The monetary point is your best, it's kind of true but on a very small scale. Most people even kids know this will never make them money.

Interesting hypothetical question that always gets heated.

Nobody will ever know the answer but that doesn’t stop all of us from making our opinions I suppose, some more right than others! 🤣

I hate these debates. It completely devalues intelligence of human beings. It devalues pure talent. It devalues competitive drive. We are talking about the .00001 of humans who have the triple combo of talent, intelligence, and drive to rise to the top to play MLB. Of course Babe Ruth could play today. He would have coaches and trainers who would optimize his swing. He could be Miguel Cabrera. He could be Adam Dunn. Or he could have been Barry Bonds - the most feared hitter of my lifetime. And Mike Trout could certainly play in 1920. Would some of the other role players die out in the transitions? Yes, sure, because their skills would not be valued under different conditions. But others would thrive under different conditions and different opportunities as they see their skills become more valued. That's just the way it is. We can't foresee how every player transitions. But the stars are most likely to remain stars because they have that special something that separates them as a generational talent.

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I think this same argument could be made for any hitter who has not played in the last 30+ years. I doubt hitters like Mantle, Aaron or Mays would have the same level of success in the modern era either.

I would see Ruth similar to an upgraded Kyle Schwarber. I would think he could still adjust to the pitching, but he would dominate like he did in his era. He would probably be something like a .260 hitter averaging around 40 home runs a year.

Travis, I like you from afar. You almost always nail it. Not this time, sir. There is no chance that average major league pitching in the 1920s/30s was 70/80 mph. 70/80 is what I faced in high school and American Legion ball. I could hit that stuff, and I wasn't even close to major league, talent wise. Sorry. Not nostalgia. Reality. If Ruth was facing 70/80, he most likely would have finished with 2,000+ home runs, and a .500 batting average. I simply don't understand why people think this watered down talent pool, injury prone era of today is so much better, and they cling desperately to that as if it's some sort of insult, or stupidity, to think that pitchers in "the good ole days" threw pretty darned fast. Yes, pitchers throw fast today. They threw fast back in the day too. Baseball is baseball, then and now.

It sounds as if you're underestimating today's players - don't do that. Baseball today is a different game than it was in the say the 20's - 50's.

I've posted this in another thread but the pitchers of today would annihilate all but the very, very best in the old generations. The pitch shaping, velocity, and pinpoint precision of sliders, curves and changeups would blow yesteryear hitters out of the water - for a time. If they kept their mouths shut, the ramp-up for older players would take even longer!

I can only take what I hear from the Ryne Sandbergs, Mike Schmidt and John Kruks of the world during their broadcasts and see with my eyes. They all have stated during broadcasts or interviews that the evolution of MLB pitching since around 2010 has been astonishing. Schmidt himself said he'd struggle to perform like the superstar hitters of today.

I'll take their words for it and extrapolate that back to the 20's-50's. It's tough debate since we'll never know - but we can all see the game is different in so many ways - some would survive, I have no doubt but to what degree?

I love these type of posts. It amazes me how people romanticize about their heroes. Todays players are JACKED and super athletic. Even the little guys are JACKED to the max. You ever see little bitty Jose Altuve without a shirt. He looks like the incredible hulk in miniature form.

The most jacked player from Ruths time would be WAY more out of shape than todays MLB benchwarmer. People are bigger, faster, and holly $hit insanely stronger now than 100 years ago.

What I see is a bunch of people that love their favorite player and are mad people do not think he would still be the greatest if playing now. Babe Ruth was the greatest of his era without question. If in his absolute prime he was magically transported to now. He would b e considered so out of shape he wouldn't even be in the best shape on a lot of beer league softball teams.:)

This is just simply not true. Ruth was hitting in old stadiums and he was outhitting the entire league. No one had ever done that before and it wasn't just because Ruth was "jacked". He had supreme technique and supreme coordination.

You can't shake those skills. They are immediately transferrable in any time. He would be killing pitching today and probably hitting over a thousand home runs in tiny parks.

LOL, Ruth outhitting the league is hilarious. He changed the game for sure by being the FIRST big homerun hitter. As soon as the game changed because of him there was several others hitting big homerun totals. He was just the first and not some super human outhitting the league.

The elite athletes born in any generation could compete in every generation with all things being equal. If you plucked Ruth or Cobb from their eras and dropped them in a game today they would be average at best. If they were born in 1995 and provided with the same training, nutrition, technology, and opportunity they would absolutely be stars. I think you can say that in virtually every sport. Baseball is an international game now. The pool of talent from which to draw from is much larger. Due to that I believe many of the role players and other average players from that era would not make major league rosters. Foxx “The Beast” was 6’ 195lbs. Todays average player is 6’2” 207.

I always thought it was a more entertaining question to pick a player like Griffey Jr., Aaron Judge, Rickey Henderson, Randy Johnson, or Ohtani and drop them via Time Machine in 1927 and watch them compete.

From Joe Posnanski's Baseball 100 on The Athletic https://theathletic.com/1708673/2020...lter-johnson/:

"How fast did Johnson actually throw? Let’s go down that rabbit hole for a minute, even though we can’t know for sure. Johnson always said that his ability to throw hard was just natural. “From the time I held a ball, it settled in the palm of my right hand as though it belonged there,” he said.

And while we can’t tell you exactly how fast the ball went, we do have a clue. Johnson was the first pitcher to have his fastball’s speed measured. True, it was measured by an archaic (and ingenious) apparatus developed by the Remington Arms Company. But it’s something. Remington had developed the machine to time the speed of bullets. Johnson’s fastball seemed the obvious next thing.

Johnson and another pitcher, Nap Rucker, showed up in a large room at the Remington lab in Connecticut. The scientists had him stand 60 feet, 6 inches away and throw his fastball through a mesh square. The ball would brush through the mesh, triggering the clock. Then, 15 feet later, the ball would slam into a metal plate, stopping the clock. Johnson’s fastball covered that distance in .1229 seconds, which means that it traveled 122 feet per second.*

*Rucker topped out at 113 feet per second.

This became a pretty famous measurement of the time: 122 feet per second! That’s fast! As newspapers reported in the day, “The Twentieth Century Limited, flying at a mile a minute gait over the rails, makes only 88 feet per second!” He threw it faster than a train!

This was not the reason Johnson was called Big Train, by the way. We’ll get to that.

What is 122 feet per second as we would understand it now?

It is 83.2 miles per hour.

It’s OK to feel let down. But the story isn’t over yet.

First, there’s the measurement point. As mentioned above when talking about how fast Feller and Ryan really threw, the speed of today’s pitchers is measured out of the hand. Feller’s pitch was measured as it crossed the plate. But Johnson’s pitch was measured seven and a half feet after it crossed the plate.

So, that requires a major adjustment. The “Fastball” physicists did the calculations and found that today Walter Johnson’s pitch would actually be measured at 94 mph or so.

That’s obviously very fast, though it certainly would not make anyone in today’s game back away. But there’s more: Johnson threw the ball with a shirt and tie on. He did not throw off of a mound. And most of all, he did not throw as hard as he could because he was trying to guide his pitches through the target. It was an awkward thing, and it took him numerous tries to get it right.

“He didn’t throw full speed or anything close,” Rucker said after the experiment. “If he had, he would have thrown over 150 feet per second.”

For the record, 150 feet per second is more than 102 mph. In church clothes. On flat ground."

Only when he's not wearing a buzzer ;)

When Babe Ruth hit 54 home runs in 1920 only one other American League team had 50 home runs total. Actually, only one other team in the entire league hit more collective home runs than Ruth hit by himself, and that was 64 home runs for the Phillies in their tiny park.

So LOL I guess?

Training plans and how weight training is used has also changed drastically over that same time. As has technique.

Here's a video showing shot put over about a century. You can see the gradual transition from everyone using a slide step, to nearly everyone using the current rotary approach. Plus differences in both techniques.
The guys winning modern competitions with the slide step are amazing, but obviously have weight trained for explosiveness compared to the earlier competitors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDslPFs3Irw&t=281s

The old idea was that in many althletic areas weight training just added mass and hurt speed and flexibility. Done right, that hasn't been a thing for a long time.

Here are a few things that are worth considering.

What makes a great hitter great?

One hard data item and one anecdote. between the two they cross generations.

Albert Pujols did some tests for someone in a lab setting. They first tested his reaction time, expecting his to be much faster than an average person. It was not, in fact his reaction time was very much in the average range.
So why is he an excellent hitter?
The next test was flashing pictures of a pitcher throwing a variety of pitches.
I don't recall exactly, but the image was shown either very briefly, or until he pressed a button. (All this is in a SI article from a few years ago)
He was not only far faster than average at identifying pitches, but could also tell location from a very briefly seen still picture. Far faster than even decent college hitters, and far far faster than fairly random people including ones who had better reaction times.

The second is more anecdotal, but I believe it says a lot.

The club I was in had a speaker who had played as a player when Ted Williams was managing.
The first year he said was wonderful, Ted focused on fundamentals like waiting for a good pitch. Team batting improved.

Year two he started losing them.
They asked one time for advice on hitting Nolan Ryan.
Teds advice was - early in the game I'd try to hit the top of the ball and drive it somewhere. Later I'd try to hit the bottom of the ball to try and get more distance.
which the speaker said was not helpful as most of the guys were asking how to hit pitches they couldn't really see.

From those things, I'd say the most important part of hitting is having that ability to see and interpret what is being seen quickly enough and well enough. And I have to think that all the top hitters since the beginning have had that ability. So a Ruth or a Williams or anyone else at that sort of level would still be a top hitter today.
That might be different for the typical player.
The other part of the Williams thing was that one of the players just neve rreally got it. To the point that one game Williams stood at the top of the dugout steps yelling out what pitch was coming and the guy still couldn't hit.
Yes, that must have also been a major distraction...

You have to at least give the old dudes credit for not having the modern medical and technological advantages. To simply just teleport Ruth to today as he was in his prime playing days - and then figure if he could play or not is almost not worthy of discussion. Now if we are going to teleport Ruth as a child, give him all the medical and technological advancements of today from his youth to playing days adult, now we might have a legit conversation.

Why isn’t there one already? Is there anything you can point to that isn’t a natural ability of Ruth’s? I don’t see any reason to suggest he couldn’t hit a baseball thrown faster. Being that he played in the era of spitballs I’m not really seeing any evidence for him not being able to hit breaking balls. He hit 342 over his career without striking out more than 93 times in a season.

He could hit the ball. And he broke the mold without any intervention from anyone else. He did everything he did with only natural instincts and no analytics or coaching. He was born Babe Ruth and I still fail to see any reason why his skills wouldn’t translate to any time he lived. To me he represents the pinnacle of ability. The most elite player among the elite.

Being the greatest of all time does not really speak to how he would fare after 100 years of gains in human performance though, if the hypothetical involves taking him just as he was and beaming him into the present.

Sure but that's what I'm asking. What couldn't he do? And why not? This is a guy who rolled out of bed as Babe Ruth. If the hypothetical is placing him in today's game where he'd probably be playing at an elite prep school during his adolescence and surrounded by elite coaching with modern analytics, why wouldn't you think he'd be even better? If that was even possible.

Yes Ruth could hit modern pitching
 

If you transported Ruth in the shape he kept himself he might have trouble. If Ruth landed in 2023 and adopted modern diet and training he would probably do fine. If the 1927 Yankees played a modern team they probably would have issues dealing with all the hard throwers today. So hard to take the best players 100 years ago and compare with modern players. Athletes today are just in better shape and grew up with modern medicine and training. Look at it the other way. Transport the 2023 Braves back 100 years ago with lousy gloves, balls, and minimal training and maybe they would not be very good.

+1 on that. He was so far ahead of anyone with a bat in his day that, with only a couple of exceptions, he rendered everyone else to insignificance. And that after being a superb pitcher. And, except for "the big bellyache", he did it for years without breaking down. And he did it without even trying.

But he did have one other thing, in the absence of "metrics" and data. According to Waite Hoyt who knew him as well as anyone, he had a computer for a mind. You fool him with one at bat, you would likely pay the price next time, even months later or next year.

Oh yeah, he was able to do so because pitchers in major league threw at the high school speed back then.

Modern pitching isn't even that good. You guys are harping on relief pitchers throwing 100 MPH but if you watch baseball it's pretty clear that it isn't hard for a major league player to hit 100 MPH. Relief pitchers are consistently not very good when you look at them as a whole. It's not uncommon to see ERA's in the 4 and 5 range for bullpen arms. Starting pitching isn't much better on the whole either. If you have a 4.15 ERA that's considered pretty decent now.

The same reason I don't think you could take anyone from the 1920s in any sport ss they were and expect them to be anywhere near the same level as today's athletes: humans are stronger, faster, and quicker by a substantial factor. How would Jim Thorpe, exactly as he was, do in a decathlon today? Same concept.

But we're talking about baseball. There are limitations of the human body that mean the basics of baseball can only change so much. For Babe Ruth not to be Babe Ruth in any era, he'd have to have some kind of weakness in his game. I don't see any. And baseball isn't like football or basketball. You can take a player from the 20s and show him baseball in 2023 and he'd recognize it.

And you could take Jesse Owens and he would recognize a track and long jump pit. And therefore what?

My point was that all sports aren't the same. Baseball as a sport has changed very little in the past 100 years. It's managed differently in game, but the game is the same and the same skills that made you an elite player like Ruth translate the same way today.

It's like saying Willie Mosconi wouldn't be as good at billiards now. Why not?

Billiards is not an athletic pursuit. Baseball obviously is. Football and basketball basics are the same as they were too, it's a question of do you see the similarities more than the differences or vice versa?

I don't agree with that. If you took Red Grange and sent him to an NFL game in 2023 he'd have no idea what was going on.

It would take him 5 minutes to adapt, and then he would realize he was not nearly up to the challenge physically because of the evolution in athleticism.

The point I have consistently made and don't see much of a challenge to is that the physical evolution in the NFL you're mentioning doesn't exist in major league baseball, at least not in my opinion.

Thank you for posting this. It was wonderful. There have been some very great posts this morning.

I want to add anecdote to the conversation. Many of the stars today excel in some very random way that most people can't comprehend. Like the Pujols story - his pitch tracking ability set him apart. I would say most star hitters share that ability: Miguel Cabrera, Barry Bonds, Griffey Jr, Ichiro, Clemente, Mays, Aaron, Williams, Ruth, Cobb. We want to say that Ruth's physical build might harm him, but that's something that can be controlled through regimen. Pitch tracking is something that is god given. You either have it or you don't.

Another anecdote is from going to autograph signings. I've always been fascinated by how large HOF'ers hands are. I'm 6 feet tall, but I have baby hands. My ring size is #7. I had mad hops in basketball, I could jump above the rim. But my little hands couldn't palm a basketball. My little hands couldn't move a baseball to my fingertips -- so essentially I was always throwing a changeup. When I met Gaylord Perry, Don Larsen, Bob Gibson.....my God! their hands and fingers were huge! If you've listened to how to throw, it's all about the placement of the baseball on different parts of your fingers. Closer to the palm is the changeup, further out is the fastball, out on the tips gets the curveball and slider, and don't forget the knuckleball. We can talk about how fast a pitcher throws and training and science....but hand size and finger length is something that is God given.

Pitchers from the pre-war era who could throw "junk" would find success in any era. They are competitive, and they adapt. It's a cat and mouse game and these players took immense pride in winning the game. Satchell Paige, WaJo, Smoltz, Clemens....the list goes on. They would find a way to compete across generations.

I think this is what you are referring to

https://everything-everywhere.com/je...20in%20history.

All of these things were actually put into a test that was run by the CBC in Canada. They got Olympic sprinter Andre De Grasse to run under similar conditions as Jesse Owens. De Grasse was a bronze medalist at the 2016 Olympics in the 100m

How fast did he run under these conditions? He ran the 100m in 11 seconds,

That is .8 seconds slower than Jesse Owens personal best.

I think a player like Ruth would still be decent in MLB, but he would not dominate like he did in his era. First, as everyone has said, there is talent to be drawn from all over the world rather than just in the US, so the overall talent of every player is at a higher level. Then there have been a lot of new pitches that have been "invented" since Ruth's era such as the cutter, different variations of the fastballs, etc., which can be thrown at different arm angles. Then there is the analytics and scouting where pitchers can pinpoint which pitches that you are bad at handling or the location. If you are not a switch hitter, the opposing team can also bring in a specialist such as lefty on lefty just to get you out. (Of course, you can say that analytics/scouting can help the hitter also, but I think they still help the pitcher more.) Then of course, there the fresh closers, which really did not exist in Ruth's era to nail down the final innings. There are even things like pitchers increasing how much spin or rotation/s they put on the baseball to increase the movement. I think all of these different things will lower a batter's batting average in general, even someone like Ruth who was very gifted with hand/eye coordination, etc.

But what are you pointing to when you suggest he wouldn't dominant in any era? You can look at very detailed breakdowns for Ruth on Baseball Reference. You can see who he performed at home, on the road, against leftys, rightys, even relief pitching. You can even go by first at bat against, 2nd, 3rd, inning by inning, batting order placement, anything you want. In every context you will see stats that represent the most elite player on the field.

He loses nothing by playing in the modern game. There are only things for him to gain today. So why wouldn't he be even better than he was?

One other factor I haven't heard mentioned yet: the insane travel conditions players from even as late as the 1960s had to endure. Mostly coach flights were difficult and longer. going back further, Train rides were less than ideal. Granted, they didn't travel west of Mississippi in Ruth's day, but the travel was still a challenge compared to today. Not to mention the equipment improvements, as well as the nutrition and training regimens available today. Even since the 80s. Remember the story where Jordan wore some of his vintage air jordans just 10 years later and then couldn't walk for a few days after due to the pain caused by the old sneakers?

I wonder if Pheidippides could outrun Jesse Owens.

From Marathon to Athens, probably.

I think either you buy that today's pitchers are bigger, stronger, faster, and more sophisticated than in Ruth's day, or you don't. That's the key to our differences here. No difference on the proposition that relative to his time, Ruth is in a class by himself.

I was thinking of Babe Herman who swung a mighty bat but had difficulty making a simple PO. He would have been perfect for the DH rule.

You nailed it, sir.

I forgot where I read this, but it was an article about Ruth's ability to hit home runs. Sometime at his peak, a group of academics decided to time Ruth's reaction to an incoming pitch when he swung. According to their findings, Ruth was fractionally quicker when he swung in comparison to other hitters that were measured.

Considering that the methods and tools used in this test were barbaric in comparison to today's standards, we would have to guess what the speed of his reaction time would be today. Let's say that we transported Ruth to the time when Pujols reaction time was tested. If Ruth took that same test and still maintained a quicker reaction time than the average ballplayer of today, he would possibly have a chance to peform well. In any era, that reaction time would give an advantage to any hitter. Yes, there are other factors, plate discipline, the type of swing, etc. that influence the possible outcome of any at bat. This is not to conclude that Ruth would still produce the same outcomes in the modern era as he did during career, but that potential remains.

Phil aka Tere1071

Complete 1953 Bowman Color, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, and 1975 Topps Baseball sets under revision as the budget and wife allows

Under construction:
1967 Topps Baseball - 330/533: Overall p-g, missing all of the bigger name stars and many commons, no high numbers or posters

1968 Topps Baseball - 420/598: Overall good, missing all of the bigger name stars and many commons from 1-375; no game cards

1969 Topps Baseball - 320-664: Overall good, missing all of the stars and many cards after #217; no deckle edged cards

1969 Topps Baseball Team Stamps- Dodgers, Royals, A’s, Phillies; missing everything else

1970 Topps Baseball Insert sets:
Booklets- missing 7; 9; 11; 13; 14; 15; 17; and 23.
Posters # 1; 8; 14; 17; and 19
I do not have any 1970 scratch offs yet.

1971 Topps Coins- 120/153
I do not have any 1971 scratch offs yet.

1974 Topps Baseball Washington variations- 32; 53; 77; 102; 125; 226; 241; 309; 364; and 599

These questions bother me more than they should. Humans have NOT evolved in the 5 or so generations from 1900 to today. The differences are in nutrition, health, training etc.

So could 1927 Babe Ruth hit today's pitching? Maybe.

But could Babe Ruth born in 1995 and able to avail himself of everything players today have at their disposal hit today's pitching. Of freaking course he could.

"Nutrition, health, training etc." are way, way overrated. These guys stub their toe or get a blister, and they go on the IL, all the while collecting millions upon millions of dollars.

I will leave this discussion with this, and some of you aren't going to like it.

You guys are obviously highly, highly educated and successful in life by any measure. How else could you afford the very expensive cards we all love?

Why, then, this weird fixation on the pitching in the 1920s and 30s as crazily inferior, while trying to justify the pitching of today?

Do you realize how you make yourselves sound in doing this?

Let me reiterate - I played high school and American Legion baseball, and I know how fast the pitching was. I am almost 66 years old. There is a huge outdoor recreation area/amusement park maybe 5 miles from where I live that has go-karts, mini golf, driving range and, among other things, very sophisticated baseball batting cages that ALL the high school teams around here regularly utilize. They have pee wee, junior high, high school, minor and major. As a form of exercise and stress relief, I regularly use the high school cage, 78 mph. Minor is 84, and major is 90. I can hit 78 even now at 66, and I'm just some schmo. I can occasionally foul one or two off in the minor cage. The safety monitors won't even allow me into major.

Please, please, PLEASE...for the love of God...stop saying that the MAJOR LEAGUE pitching in the 1920s and 30s and 40s and 50s was 70/80 mph.

I break out in laughter when you write that insanely dumb stuff. You truly have no realization as to what you're saying, how incredibly dumb it sounds. I wasn't around, I don't know, but with a grand total of 16 teams in all the major leagues, and after hearing that Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove, Bob Feller, and on and on and on, when they bore down the ball made a certain "zzzzzz" noise as it went by. That's the heat, folks. That's what it sounds like. 70/80 mph? That insults my intelligence.

I think you're not quite understanding my claim, or perhaps I didn't state it clearly enough rather. I'm not saying that the best arms during that era were only capable of pitches in the 70-80 mph range. I'm claiming that the MEDIAN pitch speed that these hitters saw was likely in the high 70s, low 80s. It's really not that much of a stretch. Median pitch speeds mean half the balls they faced were above that speed, and half were below. This would include fastballs and off-speed pitches. As a point of comparison, even the median fastball when Ken Griffey Jr. was called up in 1989 was about 87 mph. That's 1989. So the median pitch speed (fastballs & off-speed pitches) was certainly lower than that. Likely low 80s. Saying that the median pitching speeds from the 1920s was likely in the high 70s isn't exactly a stretch and it's almost certainly true.

You seem more interested in what the top speeds that the best pitchers were capable of, which is a different question. I think there were likely several guys throwing mid to high 80s fastballs, with a few elite arms like Walter Johnson touching low 90s. But none of these guys were capable of 100 mph. Sorry, but that simply wasn't happening back then. 50 oz bats would not have been used by anyone if they were facing 100 mph pitching. It's simply not possible for anyone to turn on pitches that fast with lumber that heavy.


I think this is an interesting note you've made here. You can hit 78 mph pitching with some sort of relative consistency, but dial that up by just 6 mph and what previously had been a relatively easy, or at least achievable, task has now become so challenging that you can barely get a foul tip on the ball at those speeds. A few mph really does make all the difference in the world at the plate. This is precisely what this debate is all about. We know these hitters from the 1920s were hitting slower pitching. Hell, just from the time Griffey was called up in 1989 to what hitters are facing today on average, the median fastball has gone up by more than 6 mph. That's a remarkable jump. And the pitchers from the 1920s to 1989 were even a bigger jump than that. The median fastball today is without question AT LEAST 10-12 mph faster than it was in the 1920s. And a difference of 10-12 mph is, as you've noted, significant enough for someone capable of hitting 78 mph pitching to not even be allowed in the cage by the safety personnel at your local batting cage. That's how big of a difference the pitching was that these guys were facing in the 1920s vs what guys are facing today. It's a completely different game.

Could some of the best hitters from that era have adjusted to faster pitching and still been star players? Sure, absolutely. Some of them would. But some of them also wouldn't. Which players could and which players couldn't is anyone's guess. But I don't think it's as simple as just rank ordering the players and saying all the best ones would have still been great. It's not a linear transition. Some guys can just absolutely destroy 91 mph pitching, but they can't hit 100 mph. This is why top prospects fail so often. More so than in any other sport.

And since I like data, here's a plot of median fastball speeds from 2002 to 2019.
...

The current thinking in baseball seems to be roll through as many pitchers as you need in a game to make sure the team is always pitching well into the 90s. The increased torque required for that seems to result in increased injuries and surgeries. Personal observation but I would guess it’s supported somewhere. :) I imagine many great hitters of the past would be able to catch up to the speed with training but in their day they most likely never had to think about facing a 100mph pitch, much less a constant barrage of them.