Hypothetical Question, could Ruth hit modern pitching
 

Interesting question regarding Ruth. With many pitchers hitting 100 MPH on the radar guns and Sliders, curves, split finger fastballs, could Ruth do what he did against modern pitchers?

Ruth back then transported to now. LOL, not a chance. Ruth in his prime given a year to get used to modern pitching would be a decent hitter.

Fun question to ponder. Take it a step further - could Ty Cobb hit modern pitching, or Hornsby, or Dimaggio, or Ted Williams ? You can't discredit all these top tier hitters throughout the years. So tough to compare era's.

What about Mays and Aaron? They're MUCH closer to Ruth (Mays started just 16 years after Ruth retired) than to today's players. Yet I think not many would ask the same question about them.

I think guys with compact swings would fare better than guys with the big swings. So, I'd say Cobb and Williams would be fine, while Ruth and DiMaggio (and Musial) might have a tougher time with the fast, late-breaking stuff.

ruth
 

Ruth in todays game - Daniel Vogelbach ? NO !

but the body shapes would be very similar

From Bill James.

https://www.billjamesonline.com/comp...tside_his_era/

Ruth, time traveled in his prime directly today couldn't make a AA roster

and the modern AA player would have a batting average of 612 and hit 97 home runs off the same pitching Ruth faced.

Ruth was the best hitter back then. Of course he could hit today’s pitching. Assuming otherwise seems ridiculous. Many of today’s pitchers are fast but stink. Mets staff has been full of those guys.

Pitchers throw much harder today and are aided by aided by advances in science that pitchers 100 years ago didn't have.

But, imagine how much better past great hitters would be if they were transported to the present and had access to everything that hitters today have, like strength and conditioning coaching, dieticians and improved health/lifestyle information, data on swing mechanics and other hitting analytics, opposition research, and of course, the new shift limitations.

In sports you have essentially three components that make a player good: talent, skill and intelligence (in all its forms). When you play sports as a kid it's easy to identify guys who have an abundance of talent. Hand eye coordination, balance, speed, strength. Later you see which of them hone their skills (and intelligence) with practice, observation, coaching, facing top competition, etc. And of course some guys with less natural talent succeed by becoming so skillful and savvy that they can outplay guys who are more naturally gifted.

I suspect most of the truly gifted athletes of the past would, over the course of their playing lives, adjust to their competition and improve their skills much the same way today's young players do. No one is born hitting 105 mph sliders or Zach Wheeler slurves. I bet a young Ty Cobb or Oscar Charleston would look at those pitches in awe - - for about three minutes. Then they would say "give me a week to figure this out."

It always an interesting debate and of course there is no answer.

Oscar Charleston prob could not hit a home run off Zach Wheeler. Sure.

And highly doubtful that Pete Alonso could play two games, get on a bus, drive through the night, have the bus break down in the middle of the night, sleep on the floor of a hotel for 3 hours, and then play 3 more gamers at a high level the next day.

Would Abraham Lincoln be a good lawyer today? I have no freaking idea.

What about Roy Hobbs? :p

Re-interpreting the question a bit :

If, after first being born on Feb 6, 1895, Babe had been reincarnated in his next life on Feb 6, 1995, could he hit modern pitching?

Absolutely, and with 7 month older Shoheo Ohtani as his competition, I see him staying with the Red Sox in his second trip to the majors, to completely reverse his own curse. The Pesky Pole being renamed Ruth's Rod, or Babe's Beam (thank you Thesaurus.com).

Doug "with modern medicine Koufax might still be pitching" Goodman

Bullshit!

You guys honestly think just nobody alive in the 1920-30’s were in any way athletic? WTF?

There are young players today with some very minor training as youths that can compete at the highest levels of today’s game yet nobody from the past would have been able to compete.

Clown stuff!

Nailed it!

I honestly don’t know who would struggle more…

1. The best from the past being transported today with all the modern advances and salary and computer/video help to adjust their game.

-or-

2. The best from today transported to 1920 and having to play in those conditions with only the technology available at the time with no IR and pitchers having to pitch complete games and little to no use of relief pitching.

Oh, now that some perspective is added... Could Roy Hobbs have hit modern day pitching? :p

Good call RY.

Today's AVERAGE player would melt under the strain of past conditions.

The AVERAGE player of the past could only do better today.

Let's see today's boys go back in time with no roids or HGH, no world class supplements, play doubleheaders in St.Louis in July and August, no batting helmets or body armor with headhunting pitchers allowed, no air conditioning or penthouse hotel rooms for one, bounce around and suck down coal smoke for 24 hours on a train in an upper birth, stadiums with 440 plus in cf and 407 in the power alleys and on off days play exhibition games along the way before the next series. And you will play because the owner makes money off that. Oh and in the off season work in a coal or zinc mine.
Sorry I don't see Trout of lover boy Harper quite liking that.

I agree that they wouldn't "like" it, but they could still play and would still be stars.

Have news for you Lou Gehrig or Ted Kluszewski were naturally strong and would destroy these pretty boys that lift the weights and use the special wheaties. A cock strong guy as we used to call them always destroyed the pretty boy weight trainers.
I've spent 40 plus years working out and I've seen it time and time again. Debate it all you want but it's a fact.

Wonder if they would also like to go fight in a war for 4 years also?

I think todays hitters would be able to hit for sure. The game was different back then so the hitters that were terrible fielders may not have been kept around. There were quite a few hitters that were terrible fielders that were never given the time of day in the majors (Buzz Arlett, etc) as their hitting prowess didn’t overcome their shortcomings in the field (which was infinitely more difficult in the past with glove size, field conditions, field size,etc)

Today’s pitchers…I have no idea how they would fare in the past. They would initially (I imagine) be insanely overpowering but they would have essentially zero shelf-life as Tommy John surgery would not exist and I imagine they would end up sacrificing power for longevity.

Wonder if they would like fighting in a war for 4 years or working on the farm when they were a teenager and bucking hay. If you have ever bucked hay you know what hell is. Sorry fella's no traveling all-star teams to join as you have to help make ends meet at home.

The only weights I like are family sized packages of oreos, and my main exercise is running to the fridge for another ice cream...

And I agree with you

It's interesting how people's personalities and biases feed into how they answer the question or others like it.

Personally, I think baseball has probably evolved in terms of athleticism the same way as other sports. Jesse Owens and Paavo Nurmi probably would be average high school runners now based solely on their times. Can you imagine Bill Tilden against Roger Federer? Why would baseball be different?

What do you see as the personality traits that correlate with different answers?

In the past, the best most elite athletes played baseball, whereas today football/basketball/even soccer take most of the best.

Ruth was elite at putting bat to ball with power. Those skills would translate just fine to today’s game.

Note that I didn't pickup 1920s Babe Ruth and drop him in the 2020s, I move his birthday 100 years...

Roger Federer is only Roger Federer because of the bedrock of Bill Tilden, there is no reason to think that "new" Bill Tilden given the same bedrock of "old" Bill Tilden wouldn't be able to complete with Roger Federer.

Right but you've changed the hypothetical. The hypothetical is you just beam the player into the present time.

I think a large number of collectors, especially older ones, have a big nostalgia bias that comes through in the "in those days men were men" type of comments. I think people more attuned to tech, data, etc. more easily recognize the huge gap in athleticism 100 years brings about. For example.

Babe Ruth swung a 50 oz bat in his early years, and later transitioned to 44 and 42 oz bats during his prime. The only reason that was possible is because he was facing slow pitching. Extremely slow pitching. You can watch old footage and clearly see him waiting on pitches as he sets his weight back in his stance and turns on balls with his large frame and as he swings a lamp post at a ball of leather.

But he was still the best hitter of that era. Could he hit fast pitching? I don't think we have any way of knowing. Some hitters can learn to hit faster pitching, but others can't. It's why some top prospects eventually fail at the big leagues. Some guys are absolute monsters at the plate when facing 88 to 92 mph pitching, but they reach the end of their limits after that and can't turn on 96+ mph pitches. If Ruth were alive today, he'd have to drop down to a 35 oz bat just to get it around in time. His entire swing would have to change. Could he do it? Possibly. But we'll never know. He prepared and trained for the world he lived in, and that was a very different world of baseball.

Hypothetical answer, yes. You can come up with all the stats and metrics and analytics and computer simulations and yada yada yada you want to. I don't care. The answer is yes, he could. So could Gehrig, Foxx, and all the others.

I'm sure my answer isn't in favor on this forum, and will no doubt be ignored. Oh well, sucks to be me, I guess.

And before you guys chime in with "Walter Johnson threw 100 mph and Ruth could hit against him", I'll just say bullshit ahead of time lol. Walter Johnson want throwing anywhere near 100 mph. Most of the pitching in that era was in the 70 to 80 mph range. Guys throwing 80+ were throwing heat. WaJo might have touched 90. And I'd wager my right nut that he never once threw a ball above 92 mph.

I think more people here, with the forum's heavy nostalgia bias, probably agree with you than disagree. Now go to Blowout, different world.

This forum leans romantic. I can appreciate that, but as a scientist making retrodictions about the likelihood of X or Y having occurred in the past, I have to disregard the romanticism.

No question in my mind that he could. A better question is could today's prima donnas, lacking in the fundamentals of the game, have played in Ruth's era.

Makes sense. Thanks for elaborating

Travis, I'd have to believe that he threw at least one pitch over 92 mph. What happens if you won? What do you get in return? I'd settle for a T206 Joss "lstoi" card....

A well-aged Ruth, in 1935, hit a fastball off of Satchel Paige still in his prime. Satch almost got whiplash turning his head around in amazement when that pitch went screaming well over a 450-foot centerfield wall.

How can we be so sure the old pitchers had no gas in the tank? MLB baseball was deprived of the international pool it has today, but a lot of those guys back then grew up as farm hands or ranchers of some kind. The point is that they were strong and durable back then, probably more so back then than today, especially Walter Johnson.

So young kids that can hit 85-90+ in high school just didn’t exist back then? I went to high school in Maine and we faced Matt Kinney (eventually made the majors with the Twins) and he was routinely hitting 90+ then. Was there some training that a small town kid in Maine had in the 1990’s that was impossible in the 1910-30’s?

Did Something happen at some nebulous point in history that made humans able to throw faster?

I will never understand this logic.

In 1930 the world record for the mile was 4:10. It's now 3:43. Over the same time the shot put record has gone from 16+ meters to 23+ meters.

In all honesty the competition was possibly higher back then due to the immense popularity of baseball. More kids played and discovered their natural gifts. The odds of a kid in 1920 discovering their natural ability to throw a baseball 90 mph is far higher than today.

You're talking most small towns in America were fielding full teams easily. And on top of that company and factory teams lined the streets.

If you were a Male in the 20th century between the ages of 15-40 you had a very high chance of being on a serious ball club.

The only thing separating today's players from back then is the time taken to train and practice etc. Sure they are more advanced today. But if we gave the slew of guys 100 years ago the bare bones of what we do today for training we would get slaughtered, their periods best vs ours. It would simply be a numbers game, and we would lose. We have the science today to win but it doesn't mean we are better at baseball.


This isn't even mentioning the sharp decrease in male testosterone in the last few decades.

I would posit that I haven't "changed" it but, as I said in my original post, I am "re-interpreting the question a bit"

Just because we didn't have radar guns back then doesn't mean we can't make fairly accurate retrodictions about how fast pitchers were throwing during that era. Anecdotally, we know that guys were pitching complete games with regularity, and were even on the mound in back to back games sometimes. Yet they rarely got injured. But it's not because they had magic ligaments, it's because they weren't creating enough torque to damage their arms. We also know that players like Ruth and Hornsby were swinging 50 oz bats! That's truly bonkers. If you tried to swing a bat that heavy against today's pitching, you'd never get a hit. You simply wouldn't have time to get the bat around. We also have video footage of what can only be described now as suboptimal, if not outright silly, pitching forms from numerous players. Guys practically playing catch.

But we don't even need those sorts of observations to know that guys weren't throwing nearly as hard back then. We can look at the peak of human performance in other sports which we do have measurements for like discuss, shot put, and javelin events at the Olympics. We can sit and hypothesize about how and why humans have evolved to become stronger and faster over the last 100 years, but the fact is we have for one reason or another. And that's absolutely irrefutable.

Your hypothesis isn't even true though. Today, baseball is a global sport. Back then, it wasn't. Also, there were only about 2 billion people alive in 1920. Today, there are over 8 billion. Athletes are drawn from MUCH larger pools today. Also, the financial incentives today for the best athletes to pursue a career as an athlete is remarkably higher than it was back then. Many of the best athletes in the 1920s simply weren't playing pro ball. They were providing for their families by other means. And then there's the fact that integration hadn't even happened yet.

100% comically false statement. You really think with the rudimentary understanding of medicine they had then (compared to now) that more players didn’t get seriously injured or throw out their arms?

There were tons of players that got “dead arms” as they used to call it.

There many players would have a few good seasons in the majors or minors and then disappear. Smokey Joe Wood being a very prominent example.

Weight training is far more advanced today than it was then and that is obviously true. Most workouts were calisthenics at the time and that combined with the unnatural things also done by those in strength sports has aided in a lot of the increase in the shotput record.those same things don’t help in all sports but there are obvious sports where the sports themselves hardly resemble the sport played 100 years ago or even 50 years ago…baseball is not that sport.

The mile time difference has a lot more to do with equipment and track conditions than you are giving it credit for but i think you know that