1919 Ruth vs 2021 Ohtani

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by robw1959

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.

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

[John1941]

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.

[robw1959]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

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

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.

[frankbmd]

Originally Posted by BobC

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???

Originally Posted by robw1959

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

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.

[frankbmd]

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.

[Shoeless Moe]

Originally Posted by frankbmd

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.

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!!!!!!

[frankbmd]

Originally Posted by Shoeless Moe

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!!!!!!

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.

[Peter_Spaeth]

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

[Shoeless Moe]

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.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Shoeless Moe

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!!!!!!

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

[frankbmd]

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.

[Peter_Spaeth]

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.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by frankbmd

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.

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.