*Babe Ruth Thread*

[Bucketfoot]

Hondo sighting! Awesome shots. Yes you cringe when you picture him
Playing in Coors around 1998....

[leagueleader]

A fact I just came across! In 1920 Ruth hit 14.6 of all AL HR's . To match that percentage today a player would have to hit
close to 400 HR's last season!

[Bucketfoot]

Ruth was swung round in the Of mostly left and right, but how much did he play in center? And if so, how was he?

[Bucketfoot]

Played c.f. better than Juan. Gone did but not Tris Speaker. Got it.

[GiambiJuice]

A fact I just came across! In 1920 Ruth hit 14.6 of all AL HR's . To match that percentage today a player would have to hit
close to 400 HR's last season!

But what if there were only 8 teams I the league?

Let's comare apples to apples.

[Bucketfoot]

Neat. Yes that's great stuff.

[leagueleader]

But what if there were only 8 teams I the league?

Let's comare apples to apples.

Take all 16 teams from 1920 Ruth hit 8.6% of all major league HR's
Take all 15 teams from 2014 NL teams & a player would have to hit 174 HR's to have 8.6% of leagues HR's
Take all 15 teams from 2014 AL teams & a player would have to hit 186 HR's to have 8.6% of leagues HR's

I posted something I thought was interesting. For you I looked into it is that apples to apples enough?

[SHOELESSJOE3]

Others could have hit homeruns and gotten rich and famous but just didn't want to? The major leagues didn't have very many 200 lbs players, your historical type of homerun hitter, yes you can name some exception like Hack Wilson and Jim Wynn but for the most part they didn't have the big guys who could go deep.This is no knock on Ruth , he got his , but it does show that he played against weaker competition than player in the 50's to the present times.

You know, if Babe ended up batting around .315-.325 I could take you seriously.
Just a big oversized guy in those times hitting all those home runs.
But his .342 is the 7th highest career batting average in modern times.

He was beating over 90% of the contact hitters at their own game and on another planet with the home runs and slugging.
The greatest combo, batting average and home run hitter, ever, in any era.

[torez77]

You know, if Babe ended up batting around .315-.325 I could take you seriously.
Just a big oversized guy in those times hitting all those home runs.
But his .342 is the 7th highest career batting average in modern times.

He was beating over 90% of the contact hitters at their own game and on another planet with the home runs and slugging.
The greatest combo, batting average and home run hitter, ever, in any era.

This article tries to illustrate what Ruth could've done if he'd gone for those "dinky singles."

https://www.baseballessential.com/news/2015/02/17/what-if-babe-ruth-actually-hit-600

Ohhh what might have been! :dismay:

[SHOELESSJOE3]

This article tries to illustrate what Ruth could've done if he'd gone for those "dinky singles."

https://www.baseballessential.com/news/2015/02/17/what-if-babe-ruth-actually-hit-600

Ohhh what might have been! :dismay:

I could see Babe having a .400 season, if not swinging from the heels so often.
In 1923 he hit .393, four hits shy of .400.
When he did make contact he must have really put some wood on the ball, not just the home runs.
Think of his strike out rate, strike out total number.
All the at bats when he made no contact, no chance of a hit, yet he ends up at .342.

[carsdaddy]

Hold on a minute, just being big doesn't make anyone a great hitter and and I never said it did. Ruth was clearly the king of his era and the greats from any era would be great in any era. My position is that when anyone says Ruth is the greatest of alltime when asked what they base that on they start talking numbers. You can't compare player from different eras by stats because curcumstances from one era to another are not the same. Ruth ,without question played against weaker competition than the guys from the 50's to present times which caused him to have inflated numbers. No one man is good enough to out homer every individual team in a league unless the competition is weak. If there were no stop watches and Jessie Owens was unbeaten in in the 100 yrd dash with a record of 100 -0 and won every ran by no less than 50 yrds at some point you would question the level of competition that he is running against. Because the competition was weak doesn't prove Ruth couldn't star in other eras. If playing in today game he would likely win some homerun titles with 35- 45 homerun, the standards of today game . Lets also no forget he lead th A.L in strikeouts 5 times a record that still stands today, and when he retired he was baseballs alltime strikeout king , so by the same token if he were playing in todays game he would have had over 2,000 k's for a career and go down swinging 150 to 200 in some seasons just like the strikeout kings of today . As a result .342 becomes maybe .300 to .290. In closing any man be it Ruth or Bob Gibson , that sets a record does it because he is very talented and the conditions at the time are favorable to do so. Gibson lead the league in ERA in 68 because he was great , he set a record because the curcumstances favored the pitchers. A rising tide lifts all boats.

[carsdaddy]

I could see Babe having a .400 season, if not swinging from the heels so often.
In 1923 he hit .393, four hits shy of .400.
When he did make contact he must have really put some wood on the ball, not just the home runs.
Think of his strike out rate, strike out total number.
All the at bats when he made no contact, no chance of a hit, yet he ends up at .342.

Hold on a minute, just being big doesn't make anyone a great hitter and and I never said it did. Ruth was clearly the king of his era and the greats from any era would be great in any era. My position is that when anyone says Ruth is the greatest of alltime when asked what they base that on they start talking numbers. You can't compare player from different eras by stats because curcumstances from one era to another are not the same. Ruth ,without question played against weaker competition than the guys from the 50's to present times which caused him to have inflated numbers. No one man is good enough to out homer every individual team in a league unless the competition is weak. If there were no stop watches and Jessie Owens was unbeaten in in the 100 yrd dash with a record of 100 -0 and won every ran by no less than 50 yrds at some point you would question the level of competition that he is running against. Because the competition was weak doesn't prove Ruth couldn't star in other eras. If playing in today game he would likely win some homerun titles with 35- 45 homerun, the standards of today game . Lets also no forget he lead th A.L in strikeouts 5 times a record that still stands today, and when he retired he was baseballs alltime strikeout king , so by the same token if he were playing in todays game he would have had over 2,000 k's for a career and go down swinging 150 to 200 in some seasons just like the strikeout kings of today . As a result .342 becomes maybe .300 to .290. In closing any man be it Ruth or Bob Gibson , that sets a record does it because he is very talented and the conditions at the time are favorable to do so. Gibson lead the league in ERA in 68 because he was great , he set a record because the curcumstances favored the pitchers. A rising tide lifts all boats.

[SHOELESSJOE3]

Hold on a minute, just being big doesn't make anyone a great hitter and and I never said it did. Ruth was clearly the king of his era and the greats from any era would be great in any era. My position is that when anyone says Ruth is the greatest of alltime when asked what they base that on they start talking numbers. You can't compare player from different eras by stats because curcumstances from one era to another are not the same. Ruth ,without question played against weaker competition than the guys from the 50's to present times which caused him to have inflated numbers. No one man is good enough to out homer every individual team in a league unless the competition is weak. If there were no stop watches and Jessie Owens was unbeaten in in the 100 yrd dash with a record of 100 -0 and won every ran by no less than 50 yrds at some point you would question the level of competition that he is running against. Because the competition was weak doesn't prove Ruth couldn't star in other eras. If playing in today game he would likely win some homerun titles with 35- 45 homerun, the standards of today game . Lets also no forget he lead th A.L in strikeouts 5 times a record that still stands today, and when he retired he was baseballs alltime strikeout king , so by the same token if he were playing in todays game he would have had over 2,000 k's for a career and go down swinging 150 to 200 in some seasons just like the strikeout kings of today . As a result .342 becomes maybe .300 to .290. In closing any man be it Ruth or Bob Gibson , that sets a record does it because he is very talented and the conditions at the time are favorable to do so. Gibson lead the league in ERA in 68 because he was great , he set a record because the curcumstances favored the pitchers. A rising tide lifts all boats.

It's obvious, not a surprise leading the league in strikeouts in that time period.
For a good time he played when the game was about contact, a free swinger is almost always near the top in strikeouts.
Take a look at Jimmie Foxx, led the league in strikeouts in the 1930's decade. Also finished his career with 1311 strikeouts, in 200 less career at bats than Ruth who finished at 1330. The strikeouts you quote, no surprise.

[pheasant]

We cannot ding Ruth on both strikeouts and homeruns. Yes, his domination in homeruns would drop substantially since a much greater percentage of the league would be swing from their heels. But as a result, he wouldn't lead the league in strikeouts 5 times either. He was still an elite hitter for average despite swinging a monster bat from the end of the handle instead of choking up and pecking at the ball like most of the league was doing back then.

I think McGwire's 1995-1997 is what a modern Ruth would look like for a 10 year span. McGwire during the span went .287/.430/.684 with 50 HRS and 116 K's per year. I've projected Ruth to hit in the high .280s for a career with 850 HRS in the modern game. That still has him as my best hitter ever. The gap isn't nearly as big as his actual stats show. Let's keep in mind that Ruth wouldn't be swinging a ridiculous 44 ounce bat with a wide handle. By comparison, Pujols put up a .331/.426/.624 line over his best 10 year span. I'd still take Ruth. Ruth's slugging is on a different planet. That'd still cause him to draw a bunch of walks.

Ruth's 1918-1919 Red Sox stats were incredible. He played in perhaps the worst hitters' park for a lefty in MLB history and still slugged .614 over those 2 years. He did that against spitballs and dirty balls.

And lastly, I ran 150 seasons of elite players stats to see how much they declined against a newer generation of players. I tried to quantify LQ by to doing this. I.e, I took 25 elite players and compared their age 24-26 stats to their age 34-36 stats. What I found is that even if you assumed that ALL of the decline in stats was attributed to LQ and none was attributed to age, then Ruth's 1920s stats mimic Ryan Howards' stats. Of course, I believe that a player is well past his peak from ages 34-36, unless he takes steroids.

A truly elite player has to be born that way. Granted, I have very steep LQ adjustments. 18 of my top 30 played ball since 1980. Larry Walker cracks my top 30. Heck, Jeff Bagwell tops Jimmie Foxx with my LQ adjustments. But these same adjustments still have Ruth #1, even though it's not by a big margin.

[carsdaddy]

It's obvious, not a surprise leading the league in strikeouts in that time period.
For a good time he played when the game was about contact, a free swinger is almost always near the top in strikeouts.
Take a look at Jimmie Foxx, led the league in strikeouts in the 1930's decade. Also finished his career with 1311 strikeouts, in 200 less career at bats than Ruth who finished at 1330. The strikeouts you quote, no surprise.

Homerun hitter for the most strikeout against the better competition of 50's would mean more strikeout for Foxx as well . Let me make one thing clear Foxx and Ruth both were superstar and would be in any area ,the point I'm making is that competition relative. Put any big league superstar from the 50's to present in the 20's and you would see Carew hitting .400 ,Schmidt and other historically homerun kings hitting 60 plus , with no PEDS.