I brought it up earlier but Bob Feller debuts in 1936, only a decade after Walter retires. I don't think anyone says Bob Feller threw in the 80s. Is it reasonable to think that the human body evolved so much in such little time? Bob Feller was 17 years old in 1936.

I wonder how fast Grove threw, that would be interesting.

That's another good example. Bob Feller was measured at 98 in 1946. I don't know how accurate that reading was either and even if it was, I think it's safe to assume he probably threw harder when he had less mileage.

If it is to be believe that Walter was throwing in the low 80s, and Walter retires 20 years before Feller is recorded at 98, how can that evolution be explained? Isn't it more likely the measurements for Walter were flawed?

Walter Johnson was 49 years old in 1936. I think it's reasonable to think the arm developed that much in 32 years.

Why? People are still throwing 98 to 100, which is where Feller was measured all the way back in 1946. It is 2021. In nearly 80 years the human body is still at the same peak when it comes to elite heat. Bob Feller was an elite arm in his time and would still be considered an elite arm now. How can 80 years change nothing but mountains were moved between Johnson and Feller?

The human body is only capable of so much. I would contend that elite arms have always thrown close to 100 mph and 100 years from now they will still be throwing 100 mph.

Steve Dalkowski might have been the hardest thrower in history and it wasn't due to any type of modern training. He just had the arm and his arm would have been the same no matter when he was born.

I think it is kinda cool we are comparing the Babe to a Japanese ballplayer.
I lived in Tokyo for 9 years during the 70's and 80's and can assure you that the Japanese are every bit as passionate about baseball as we are. While there, I became a die-hard, or as die-hard as possible being a gaijin (outsider), fan of the Tokyo Giants and attended many a game. I loved the custom of fans returning foul balls which are collected by an army of very pretty girls. Don't think that would work at Fenway. And while Nagashima, Oh, Ichiro and soon Ohtani are national icons, I don't believe they are held in the same esteem as Ruth, nor ever will be.

Another point that may support you is that the longest home runs don't really seem to be any longer than they were well back in the day. Something I haven't figured out.

Also a good point. The human body can only do so much in the context of baseball. It can only throw so hard and it can only hit the ball so far. I think these are universal truths for this sport. That's not to say that the body hasn't evolved to dominate other sports in other ways.

Bottom Line to Me is I enjoy the History of sports and all those amazing players and I can only hope that many of these current players achieve greatness so I can enjoy them now and my kids/grandkids can enjoy them in the future

Not so sure dropping a modern day BB player into the game 100 years ago is the equivalent and proper comparison as having that same player being born 120-125 years ago and then growing up during those earlier times, subject to the training and techniques back then, let alone the differences the cultural and economic impact would have on their development. And then lets see how that modern day BB player would then fare playing 100 years ago, if he even played at all.

You guys are looking at just taking someone out of context and dropping them into a completely different situation and expecting a true and proper comparison can ever be made....it can't. Humans over the last few hundred years alone have changed and grown bigger, stronger, and faster due to advances in medicine, nutrition, and even economics. Don't discount things like the industrial revolution and advances in farming allowing for more nutritious food to be mass produced and available for more people than ever before to help in developing those bigger, stronger athletes of today, or the mechanization of society and the change from a formerly agrarian world society affording modern people more freedom and leisure time to play and train for sports now than they ever did in past history. Who's to say if Mike Trout were born 125 years ago if his family situation back then would even allow him time to ever play baseball, or if he had to work to support himself or his family instead. Ballplayers at the top levels back then didn't make the kind of money, relative to everyone else, that they do today. So you didn't have people seeking out and nurtuing young athletic talent like they do today, and put those young people into training regimens at earlier and earlier ages than ever before.

Combine that all with the underlying competetive nature of humans overall and the fact that records and achievements reached 50 or 100 years ago are now looked at and chased by modern athletes who strive to best them and train and practice even harder and more focused than ever just to do that. Those athletes of 50-100 years ago weren't necessarilly motivated or thinking the same way as they were the ones setting those records and achievements that others are now trying to best, or they had already bested those records and achievements set by even earlier athletes, and so could now relax and not necessarily worry and focus on taking their record even higher. Just imagine Ty Cobb growing up after Pete Rose and then setting his sights on besting Rose's all-time hits record.

And there is also the equipment and other intangible factors playing into all this. Balls, bats, gloves, even shoes, uniforms and things like sunglasses impact the way the game is now played. Players 100 years ago didn't have any of these advantages, which even though they may be more subtle, still help out the modern players and their play. And even the way players traveled between games could impact their performances. Back then there were long train rides instead of modern jet flights, and so on.

And lastly, you eventually come to some point where for certain physical, athletic achievements there is a pinnacle the human body can reach, and for some, we've pretty much reached those pinnacles of human performance already. For example, I've read somewhere that based on the human body, the absolute maximum speed someone could ever throw a baseball at was about 110MPH. No current human physiology will ever do that, but instead, you have more players now throwing into the upper 90's and even the 100's than ever before. And while it can be argued that if you took one of these modern pitchers and dropped him into a game 100 years ago, he'd likely blow everyone away.......at first. Don't forget that back then nobody threw baseballs that fast so the hitters of the day were never able to practice hitting against pitchers like that, nor needed to, and adjust accordingly. Its all more relative in baseball than in any other major sport. You take basketball or football, and it is basically about size, strength, and speed. Athletes in those sports from 50-100 years ago wouldn't stand much of a chance against the players in those same sports today, with probably a few exceptions for some of the all-time elite players from back in the day. Baseball though doesn't seem to have the overall glaring differences in the size, speed, and strength of players today versus those of 100 years ago. I'm sure the overall, average BB players of today would be slightly larger than those of 100 years ago, but that difference is more reflective of the fact and difference that the average male of 100 years ago is smaller than the average male of today.

We'll never be able to see any of these switches of players between eras occur to see how they would work out, but that is what makes the discussions so interesting. So maybe the best we can ever do is look at all the advanced analytics and statistics that baseball has available, and use that to compare how well a player performed relative to other players during the era they played in, and use that to compare against how well a player from a different era performed versus other players from his time.

There are probably theoretical limits to track and field, swimming, etc. and I do think the increments by which records are broken have become pretty tiny, so maybe eventually we'll get to the limit there. That said, back in the day I was running (not competitively but I did follow it), I never would have believed the current marathon times were possible.

I am not sure if Peter's remark was meant to be tongue-in-cheek but you can put me in the camp that is skeptical of the idea that players in the 1920s were hitting multiple 500+ foot home runs even though this is not done with regularity today. People can run faster, jump higher, lift heavier weights, hit a golf ball farther...but cannot hit a baseball farther than people 100 years ago?

Wouldn't the more likely answer be that earlier measurements were largely anecdotal or based on estimates ("some kid said the ball landed here", "I saw Babe hit them over the railroad tracks which must be 600 feet away") or were measured from where a ball stopped rolling. Versus today where we can fairly accurately say how far a ball would have traveled based on exit velocity and launch angle (which I assume is how they come up with current distances since a ball rarely actually lands at the stated distance).

To me Babe Ruth's home run achievements stand alone, especially in comparison to other players of his era. He was the outlier of all outliers. I just don't think we need to make stuff up for this to be true. And saying that there is a similarity between 1919 Ruth and 2021 Ohtani (a starting pitcher who also played a position and hit a lot of home runs) doesn't take away from either player's accomplishments. I think it adds to both players. Ruth because he did something (in a season) that has not happened again for so long and Ohtani because he is doing something (in a season) that was last done by the consensus greatest player ever.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Dimensions of old stadiums were far larger to the deepest part of the park than today's stadiums. Many of the home runs hit today would have been long fly balls in any other era. If people are hitting the ball farther today, then why did the fences get moved in?

To create offense, of course. Chicks dig the long ball, etc. But my point is that people aren't hitting the ball further. The game has catered to the opposite.

I think you're also skipping over some important details in what you're saying. Golf, for instance, has completely overhauled it's tools. Nobody hitting a golf ball today is using similar materials to someone 100 years ago. But baseball is relatively unchanged. The ball is wound differently, but it's the same weight it's always been. Bats are still made out of the same wood they've always been made out of. The mound is still the same distance away.

Wasn't being tongue in cheek. People measured home runs back then, thus the term, tape measure shot. Wasn't just anecdote and tall tale. Ruth hit some balls out of parks like Forbes Field (his last game), no? And I think one of his way back with Boston was measured at close to 600. Move the discussion forward, is anyone hitting them further than Kingman did 40 years ago?

Okay, maybe I should be less skeptical. I think the term tape-measure came from Mantle's home run out of Griffith Stadium in 1953, but I can't say for sure home runs were not accurately measured in 1921. Although, would people really think of doing that at the time? And for every home run Babe Ruth was said to have hit over 500 feet?

I guess the upshot for me is that I also can't figure out why, for an athletic feat that basically requires strength and coordination, people do not hit the ball farther than they used to.

My conclusion was that maybe they didn't really hit the ball as far as people say they did. But, absolutely, I could be wrong about that. Especially because essentially I am saying we don't really know how far they hit the ball back then.

Yes, I was thinking about that with golf, that would explain it (I didn't want to overload my post). But I guess what I was saying is that with essentially the same material, people today are not hitting the ball farther than distances reported 100 years ago.

I guess my inclination was to conclude that the distances reported may not have been accurate. But I guess one can also conclude that players today (except for maybe Stanton, Ohtani, and Judge) cannot hit the ball as far as players used to be able to hit them. I really don't know, of course.

Can we at least agree that Ohtani is having a pretty good season? But that Babe Ruth was a better player? :o

Ohtani is having a great season. I watch him play every chance I get. Are players today better than players of the past? NO. You can not compare different era's. Think of the equipment used. Could today's players catch a ball in the early day gloves? Todays glover are at least twice the size, and they still have trouble catching a ball. They wouldn't even know how to catch in one of those old gloves. That why the old saying was two hands catching. How about bats? could todays players hit with the old clunky bats they used back then? I'll bet the early players would have loved to get their hands on one of the new skinny bats. The baseball were not yet as hard as today, yet they could hit em a mile. And last but not least the pitchers. ERA doesn't mean much today as starting pitchers last only five or six innings before being replaced by a reliever. The old timers pitched a game from start to finish whether it be nine innings or fifteen innings. Players from all eras would play just as well as each other. You can't compare era's now or ever. Same game, same way to play.

Ruth pitched in the dead ball era though. Not even remotely close to an apples to apples comparison.

Frank A just made a very good point in the post above yours. Ruth didn't have that luxury of only going 5-6-7 innings then having the bullpen come in, he went the distance. Or Ruth's ERA would be even lower and Ohtani even higher if he had to go as deep in a game.

Of course you can come back with Ruth didn't play against everyone he could have played against.

It could go back and forth, bottom line is the final numbers in the book, and Ruth's annihilate Ohtani's pitching & hitting statistics. Not even a comparison. Call me in 10 years, when the Angels still suck.

Trout's been stuck in purgatory 11 years ZERO playoff wins .083 lifetime playoff batting average. Enjoy the money boys, you'll never wear the ring!! Unless they are bidders in Goldin's Auctions.

In fact I'll go on record and say Trout's Rookie Card will sink like a stone once his career is over and he never made a WS appearance.

A rich man's Ernie Banks.

There will some new "best ever" player who will be the hot thing to own.

SELL NOW

Are you referring to Ruth's ERA being so much lower than Ohtani's, even though Ruth pitched in more than 5X the number of games in his career than Ohtani has so far, and that during the dead ball era teams scored less runs than they do now, and thus a reason why Ruth's era was so much lower? Or how about the that fact that of the 147 games Ruth started in his career, 107 of them were complete games, whereas of the 27 games Ohtani has started in his MLB career, he has yet to pitch a single complete game?

love it!!!!!!!!!

In Ohtani's defense, he is not allowed to pitch a full game. They take him out in the 6th inning and let the relievers lose it for him. Had he stayed in some of those games his record would probably be 11 or 12 wins. Angels bullpen pitches like shit.

Some additional pitching comparisons:

Ruth at 94-46 and Ohtani at 9-4, have comparable winning percentages of around .691-.692. But Ohtani has started a total 27 MLB games so true winning percentage based on actual starts is really only .333. Meanwhile, Ruth has 94 wins in 147 starts, for a true winning percentage based on starts of around .693. Now to be fair, Ruth also had 16 relief appeances in his career, leading to a total of 163 pitching appearances lifetime. I doubt all 16 of those relief appearances resulted in wins for Ruth, but even if you factor in all his pitching appearences, he still ends up with an overral winning percentage based appearences of about .577, quite a bit higher than Ohtani.

Nows here's a pitching stat that does favor Ohtani. Over his career so far, MLB batters have averaged hitting only .199 against him, whereas Ruth's career average by hitters batting against him was .224, which though still really good, is a bit higher. Of course, in Ohtani's case the MLB batting average during the years he's pitched in so far is .248, so he's doing .049 better than the league average, not bad at all. Oooohhh, wait though, during the years Ruth pitched the MLB batting average was .332, which means Ruth was .108 below the MLB average, pitching over a much longer period of time and a lot more appearances, the majority of which were complete games.

Ohtani is still considered in the early part of his MLB career, and therefore has a lot more playing to do and stats to put up. However, he's already incurred significant injuries and downtime from playing, and in going forward in his MLB career to get close to some Ruth pitching stats will take an exceptional improvement in some areas for him to begin approaching Ruth. I wish him well, good player.

I think nobody has suffered more statistically for this modern thing than Jacob DeGrom.

League batting average was .263 in 1919.

Is it possible that the reason pitchers 100 years ago were able to complete so many games and pitch so many innings is because they didn’t throw the ball as hard? Sure, maybe Walter Johnson hit the low to mid 90s a few times each game but maybe he and other pitchers only threw that hard in specific spots… and for most of the games they were throwing 80-85, saving wear on their arms.

It doesn't take anything away from the Babe to acknowledge how special Ohtani is and what he is doing in this age of modern baseball and the physical specimens that play the game. The only reason that there is a comparison is the fact that no player has performed to this level as both a pitcher and everyday player since Babe did it for a short period of time back in the day. I don't think there is anything wrong with showing appreciation for both and marvel at what Shohei is doing.

I mean, it’s hard to understand how pitchers of today, with better size, physique and training, break down while pitchers in 1900-1920, who were smaller, were completing every game and throwing 300-400 innings every year, year after year, in shorter rotations. They couldn’t have been throwing as hard.

And how did all of those 5’7 165 pound guys get their 45 ounce bats around on 95 mph fastballs?

That's absolutely the reason. They also didn't strike out nearly as many guys so were throwing fewer pitches to each hitter. This idea that they were all these superhuman endurance machines because they threw a ton of complete games is just nonsense.

Wasn't knocking Ohtani for not pitching complete games. Just noting that since most pitchers get tired as a game goes on, you would normally expect them to be giving up more hits and runs by pitching later into games, which tends to make Ruth's career ERA even more impressive when compared to Ohtani.

And as for Ohtani not getting wins his bullpen blew, that argument cuts both ways. How many more wins/less losses might Ruth have if he had been regularly taken out of games when he did start tiring?

Feller is one guy. And he wouldn't be the fastest guy if he's throwing 98 today. Or even top 15 or 20. If Johnson was really throwing 89 - or 91 - then that's a 7-9 mph jump in 30 years. And the top guys now are throwing 104 or 105 - a 6-7 mph jump since Feller. Except now there's DOZENS of guys throwing 98-101 where back in Feller's day, there was....Feller. There's a physiological maximum for the human body in terms of throwing hard. And now there's a lot more guys that are a lot closer to that max then ever before.

I don't believe for a second that the distances from back then are accurate or measured in the same way as today's home runs.

Are there stats comparing pitch counts across eras?

Stats are just numbers. Figures lie and liars figure, and we have some on this forum.

All numbers aside Brian has summarized the intent of this thread without using a calculator, or an abacus for that matter.

Bravo!

Not arguing, just look at Ruth's Advanced Pitching stats on baseball-reference.com

The .332 is shown as the MLB average supposedly over the years Ruth was pitching, unless I'm reading something wrong.

I think you are for in the American League

1915 .248
1916 .248
1917 .248
1918 .254
1919 .268

How you get .332 for these five years would suggest that you need a new abacus or

perhaps you were looking at On Base Percentage or OBP. I dunno.

And i'm happy with my current accountant.:D

Because baseball is the only sport that matters.

Would The Four Horsemen flourish in today's NFL?

No, tennis isn't even close to the way it was back then. I'm not sure if or how tennis balls have changed over the years, but the old catgut string on a racket had way less tension than the modern string fiber used today. It is a bit like comparing the tension on a large trampoline to the tension on a mini-trampoline. It was way harder to ace your opponent on the serve back then, or even get the serious speed tennis professionals pack today in their swings, chiefly because of the way that the modern metallic rackets can withstand all of that pressure compared to the wooden rackets of yesteryear. Maybe Tilden could have adapted his game to modern equipment and been successful in any era, but my point is that the game has changed considerably over time.

Ruth likely would have pitched for many years if the DH had existed.

Interesting. So did this start to happen in the 70s with that new racket Connors used, or was it earlier?

I'd like to clear something up regarding MPH for pitchers. Nowadays the speed is measured right after release, while back in the day it was measured at the plate, causing speeds to seem much lower compared to today, but actually being the same. Thus Feller's 98 is not equaled by anyone today.

Isn't 500 feet the same today as it was back in Ruth's time? Tell me something - how is it that given today's larger talent pool and better training, diet science, etc., and a more aerodynamically designed baseball to boot, how is it that 500+ foot big league game homers are still exceedingly rare, but in 1921 Ruth hit one in every American League park his played? For anyone to say Ruth was anything even close to an average ballplayer of ANY era is to close one's mind to all evidence and deny the truth . . . that he was an absolute freak!

I'm not sure what they're showing in the Advanced Pitching statistics then. Here's the links for both Ruth and Ohtani, Look for yourself, I'm not making this up. They show the Batting Against Averages of all players against both Ruth and Ohtani over their careers, and then right below those figures they show what they call the MLB Averages. I can't tell how the site is coming up with those specific MLB Average numbers though. Would think/hope they are consistent in the way they are being calculated so that whatever they actually represent, Ruth's is still much lower than whatever they are measuring than Ohtani's is.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...ruthba01.shtml


https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...ohtansh01.shtm


And who ever said I wanted to be your accountant???

This is known as doing a deep dive, research-wise, and very well done, Bob.

Sorry - somehow there was a double entry here.

No, it was far later. I used to play tennis pretty regularly in the '70s, and I remember the catgut-strung rackets very well. Jimmy Connors had to use them
along with Bjorn Borg, Arthur Ashe, etc. The modern ones are incredible! I got a firsthand experience with one of those about ten years ago. It is so easy to get some serious velocity on the ball nowadays compared to the effort it took way back then.

Sorry Bob & Rob. I'm afraid you two have done a deep dive in the shallow end of the pool by including four years in which Babe Ruth pitched in a total of 4 games for a total of 31 innings. You really think adding 31 innings and allowing two seasons in the early 30s to skew your statistics is valid.

To further illustrate the futility of your argument, name one year, just one year, in either league where the league batting average was .332?

Just answer the last question if you can.

You may be surprised to learn that in 1930 the National League batting average was .303. I believe the Yankees were in the American League in 1930. 1930 is the only year that any league average was above .300. I just wanted to save you some time.;)

Post #110 reiterated in post #117 is the best explanation of why this thread was started and why it is relevant in baseball history.

You cannot compare eras with numbers, different game, different talent, different century. if you cannot understand that, so be it.

And not to worry, I still love you all.

Perhaps the new inclusion of Negro Leagues status is skewing those MLB figures? I don't know that's the explanation but taking the AL and NL obviously the MLB average could not have been anywhere near .332.

More likely the numbers on the site are wrong.

I don't think anyone has said that 500 feet has changed or that Ruth was an average ballplayer. I think some of us (well, maybe just me) are questioning whether Ruth actually hit as many 500+ foot home runs as has been claimed. I don't think bigger ball parks is the answer because, yes, there were some crazy long distances to center field, but some were way shorter down the lines and to the power alleys (many having been built specifically to fit into a city block).

I guess if someone was able to determine to what field he hit each home run that year, and what row each one landed in, they could work something like that out...and maybe someone has.

And I am not saying that Ruth wasn't the greatest player ever. Just that perhaps some of the quoted home run distances need to be taken with a grain of salt.

I agree with you that that despite today's larger talent pool and better training, diet science, etc., and a more aerodynamically designed baseball to boot, 500+ foot big league game homers are exceedingly rare.

That just makes me question how so many could have been hit 100 years go under worse conditions.

But if anyone could hit 500+ foot home runs in every AL park in a year, it would have been Ruth. I certainly can't say for a fact that he didn't.

That is funny, because in the very first post to start this thread you ended up including all kinds of figures and stats for Ruth and Ohtani yourself. You even asked the specific question, "So how have they done?", which is basically telling everyone to compare their stats. Now, did you tell everyone in your opening post to not start comparing Ruth to Ohtani beyond those single years for both of them? No! But you know darn well that people on here are going to start comparing their overall stats and how you can't compare the two and blah, blah, blah. You can pretty much expect the thread will also get hijacked somewhat in the recurring modern versus old time player comparisons and who is better, and blah, blah, blah again. So why didn't you just leave out all the actual stats and simply say that 2021 and Ohtani is the first time since 1919 and Ruth that we've had a full time pitcher and everyday player in MLB, wish Ohtani well, and leave it at that?

Damn it, I want to know where that .332 comes from, now it's bothering me.

It comes from the table below on Ruth's Baseball Reference page but I have no idea what it represents. The number doesn't make sense to me.

Yes sorry I saw it in the table I just don't know how on earth it is derived.

Here's a question for the good doctor.

If Ohtani pitched back then his career would be over basically before it started right?

He had Tommy John surgery in 2019, what doctor in 1919 is fixing that for him?

GOODNIGHT!!!!!!

.332 is not because of the Negro League stats being included. I checked a few years and the numbers seemed normal. For example, in 1930 the NNL batting average was .277 which would actually have brought the AL and NL averages down.

Yeah that makes sense. Must be some massive database error.

What's odd is that the slugging average of .372 seems to be too low while the BA seems to be too high.

Edited to add: actually .372 may be correct for the average of those eight seasons...it just seems wrong given that the BA is so high.

I looked for a pitcher of roughly the same era (not ERA) and for some reason Stan Coveleski came to mind and his stats have the same issue.

Clearly we are missing something, or as Peter said, there is a database issue.

I did the same for Alexander. There must be some years in that mix they just have way wrong.

HOPE I DIDN'T WAKE YOU.

During my residency, one of the orthopedic residents was Lew Yocum. We were friends. He went on to become the Angels team physician for years and worked in conjunction with Dr. Frank Jobe, his senior partner, (frankjmd). Jobe gave a lot of the credit for modifications of his Tommy John procedure to Yocum. I believe Lew was present assisting in Tommy John's original Tommy John surgery.

Yocum was born in 1947 so technically you are correct. Anesthesia in 1919 wasn't so hot either. I was never trying to say Ohtani is better than Ruth or ultimately will be better than Ruth. Any numbers in the OP were merely presented to show the similarity of the two seasons for a pitcher/hitter. No other season comes close in terms of similarity score. I regret that many think this thread denigrates Ruth. It does not. Nor does it elevate Ohtani to the same level. It is what it is. The thread has had a number of views, but perhaps the launch angle was improperly conceived, but lets not get into a discussion of abortion. The thread has a right to live on Net54.

Speaking of surgeons, looks like Dr. James Andrews is still active at almost 80 years old. That's awesome.

And I'm just saying to those who say Ruth couldn't compete in today's game and Walter Johnson couldn't pitch today....

....that considering how many of today's pitchers have come back from Tommy John surgery, they obviously couldn't play back then. They'd be done before they started.

Also, I'd like to see Bryce Harper & Mike Trout in Afganistan. Like Matty & Cobb went off to War, or the guys who had jobs in the offseason. Not working out all offseason, or coddled and groomed to be baseball players basically since birth. I'd be stunned if Trout knew how to start a lawnmower.

Trout grew up in a middle class suburb, no? He probably cut his grass once or twice lol.

That's okay Frank, because in one of Ohtani's years he pitched in 2 total games for only 1.2 innings. So that skews the stats for him as well, right? At least using your logic it would seem so. Of course, exactly what stats does that skew by the way?

As for the averages, I'm only quoting off the baseball-reference.com site, which I've always been led to believe was a fairly accurate site when it came to statistics. So I do not know the complete nature and origin of the numbers I was quoting as comparisons for Ruth and Ohtani. Someone else mentioned that the recent inclusion of Negro League stats may have had a hand in the seemingly odd numbers shown on baseball-reference.com for Ruth. I had forgotten about that myself, and don't know if that is the reason or not. What I do know is that I was responding to someone else who it looked like was claiming that Ruth's lifetime ERA was only better than Ohtani's because he pitched in the dead ball era. I was merely noting things to dispel such thinking for all dead ball era pitchers, not just Ruth. I only referenced Ruth and Ohtani because they are the players being talked about in this thread. I did not originally hijack your thread to compare Ruth and Ohtani's careers, or ever say Ohtani was better than Ruth or vice versa. i also didn't start the talk about comparing players from one era with another either, I merely joined in the conversation that the thread had morphed into. I actually agree with you about this year being the first comparable year since Ruth in 1919 that you can see someone doing what Ohtani is doing in 2021.

By the way, you mention that stat I got off Baseball-Reference.com and how you illustrate the futility of my argument by doing so apparently. Well, what argument is futile then? That was one of several things I mentioned in regards to countering someone implying Ruth had a good ERA only because he pitched in the dead ball era. That was the argument I was talking about. And even if that figure from the reference site is somehow wrong, that doesn't change any of the other figures I'd mentioned that Ruth has to show he was a good pitcher, dead ball era or not. So by coming after me about the invalidity of my "argument", that must mean you feel that Ruth having pitched during the dead ball era does diminish his stats and accomplishments, and by extension, more or less diminishes the abilities and accomplishments of all other dead ball era pitchers as well, right!?!?!?!?!?

And as for your direct question about naming the single year that either the NL or AL had an average of .332, I never thought that would have been reached either, but merely quoted the stat the reference site had and therefore assumed was correct for whatever numbers went into it. In looking at it further, it probably is an error on the part of the reference site and likely is OBP shown on Ruth's site after all, at least that's my guess. If I instead use the BAs for the years he pitched in, the average will probably be more like .266, which is about .044 higher than his lifetlme BA Against of .224. Ohtani's lifetime BA Against is about .049 better than the MLB BA average during his pitching years then, so the very slight edge goes to Ohtani for this one, but that in and of itself doesn't disparage Ruth's pitching in the dead ball era. So how about this instead since the original comment I was responding to dealt with Ruth's ERA. Off the Baseball Almanac site they show total runs scored by the AL and NL going all the way back to 1901. Using the 10 year's Ruth pitched in, the average total MLB runs (w/o the Negro Leagues) scored came out to be about 10,011 per season. So for all 16 teams back then in both leagues playing full schedules that means that the average over that time was about 4.12 runs scored per game. I broke it down to runs per game because of the shortened 2020 season, and the not yet complete 2021 season. So for 2019-2021, there have been 46,214 runs scored to date, in 9,874 games, or a runs per game total of about 4.68 runs per game. So the difference from back in the dead ball era to the modern baseball era, at least for the specific years we're looking at, was only about half a run per game difference. Not really as big a difference as you may have thought since it was called the dead ball era. And Ruth's career ERA was 2.28, which was about 1.84 lower than the runs per game average for Ruth's time, and that was with him pitching mostly complete games. Ohtani's career ERA is currently at about 3.58, which is only about 1.10 lower than the average runs being scored per game now, and is also based on him only throwing partial games and getting pulled around the 6th innings. Now he is also still getting over and recovering from injury, so hopefully that will improve even more over time, as will his pitching stats then. Regardless, he still has a ways to go if he wants to get closer to Ruth's ERA figures though.

So in response to the poster who downplayed Ruth's ERA because he pitched in the dead ball era, I'll throw this additional info out to replace the error in stats from the reference site, and replace it with this info about how much lower his ERA was against the approximate MLB average, sans the Negro Leagues, for his time. This was not is response to you, or your comments about what people are posting in the thread you started.

Excellent point about comparing players from different eras, medical advances is a huge part in players of today versus yesteryear.

Doesn’t the opponents batting average of .332 on the Ruth page bother you. That figure is for all MLB presumably for 1919. There is not one team in 1919 that hit remotely near that average.

Look if you will at the 1962 Mets with a record of 40-120, not very good. Their pitching staff was not the best I think you would agree. The opponents batting average for the 1962 Mets was .281. Doesn’t that make you wonder about the .332 number from 1919.

Perhaps there is something wrong in Denmark or at least on the Baseball Reference website. Deadball era BAs were less than .250 by and large until 1918.

Babe Ruth is great, Comparing him to anybody is sac religious.

Gloves have been mentioned as a differential between eras and I agree. You know what happened with the deadball gloves. Yup, there were more errors. And of course you know what more errors mean, don’t you? Yup, more unearned runs and lower ERAs. Deadball era ERAs were uniformly low, but runs scored not so much. The great deadball pitchers benefitted statistically from fielders who actually caught a lower percentage of the balls hit or thrown to them.

Aren’t statistics great? Base an argument on a fallacious statiistic and bingo, you win. Congrats.

The Four Horsemen were used to 'three yards and a cloud of dust' football, so I would be surprised if they flourished in today's pass-heavy league. One of them, Jim Crowley, later went to Fordham and coached the Seven Blocks of Granite. I have never seen a block of granite get tackled for a loss, however mobility might be an issue with them. As an aside, one of the teammates of the seven was Steve Sorota, who later became the football coach at Phillips Andover. The center on Andover's 1970 team was Bill Belichick, who copied a lot of Sorota's methods and has had a halfway decent career.

Now would the Four Horsemen flourish on today's Supreme Court? They still have to contend with Three Musketeers, but only one swing justice, not two.

Perhaps all of the pitchers of today who need Tommy John surgery wouldn't have been injured back in the 1900-1920 era because they wouldn't have been throwing as hard on every pitch...

I think what you're saying is that people don't know how to pitch anymore. I'd agree with that. Look at Syndergaard. He worked out enough to throw a ball through a brick wall but what good did it do him? He's not even on a mound.

You mean health problems like Amos Rusie and Sandy Koufax had?

Very true.

I think what you had in the 1900-1920 era were pitchers who pitched hard only when they had to. I'm sure Walter Johnson and Smoky Joe Wood hit 93-95 mph for a few pitches each game, but for the majority of the game they were probably throwing mid-to-high 80s and varying their speeds. Lesser pitchers were probably throwing low 80s and maybe approaching 88-89 a few times per game. It makes absolutely no logical sense to think that those guys were throwing complete games of 120+ pitches every third day all season long and throwing 90s on every pitch, like many do today. No pitcher would have lasted doing that.

Of course, even pacing themselves, some pitchers were still going to break down with that much work.

I don't think their bodies were similar to Syndergaard.

That's what pitching is though if you want to throw 9 innings. It would be a little strange to think the last pitch and the first pitch were constant the entire game.

I love the story, probably apocryphal, of the hitter who took three straight strikes from Johnson and complained to the umpire that the third one sounded low.

Understood, but guys today aren't throwing 9 innings. Today, pitchers might range between 89-96 for 5-6 innings. Back then, pitchers might range between 79-86 for 9 innings and only hit the upper levels if they were in a jam.