1919 Ruth vs 2021 Ohtani

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by BobC

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.

League batting average was .263 in 1919.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

League batting average was .263 in 1919.

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.

[frankbmd]

Originally Posted by BobC

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.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by frankbmd

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.

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???