Ichirio had a high 90's fastball. Chose to play the field and ended up with 3,000 hits while starting as a 27 year old rookie. Smart choice.

Yeah, the second best pitcher today who hits 50 bombs a year and steals 20+ bases is who exactly? Trying to figure out who his peers are.

Babe has his own adjective for a reason. He truly was, Ruthian 💪

Some people want to conclude the players they watch today are better and some want to conclude for nostalgia and the old-timers, but considering Ruth completely rewrote how the game was played and Ohtani has played 1,500 games less than him, this is an absurd comparison to make now and the last thread on it lol. Just let Ohtani be great and awesome and figure out where he ends when he's reasonably close to the end at least. The Ruth comparisons are not based in reality at this point in time. At least pick some modern guy who has played something approaching a full career to declare better than Ruth.

If they let Wes Ferrell play the field he would be the only guy worthy of being discussed in Ohtani's league and Ohtani beats him in talent in both areas by a mile.

Smoky Joe Wood coming in at a distance 3rd, maybe Don Newcombe in the area...unless some of the Negro League guys are liked a bit better (I'm not that familiar)...

he may notOhtani may not even be the best player in the game today. Aaron Judge is a much better hitter, OPS+ 179 to OPS+ 160. Judge is a plus defender, Ohtani is a no defender. Ohtani's "not Cy Young quality" arm has been worth 16 WAR in 6 seasons. WAR is the only way to measure two completely different skill sets. Judge has been worth 8.8 WAR/162 games, Ohtani 8.2 WAR/162 games. Both elite players, but you can't say Ohtani is better.

It's unbelievable and amazing that Ohtani can pitch at the level he does on top of being a great slugger, but at the end of the day, as far as his pitching is concerned, he's won 39 career games with a 16 WAR as just mentioned and Fangraphs I believe calculates it even lower.

As a hitter, Judge's 162 game average WAR is a full three points higher. Soto's is higher as well.

My point is that it was easier for Ruth to run up more WAR against his contemporaries than it is for Shohei to do the same against his since it's a comparative stat.

Why? Yes there is the whole overlay of baseball being white only, but at the same time with so far fewer teams, and no other major sports to siphon off great athletes, there was arguably more concentrated talent then, no?

Aaron Judge is a no-doubt better hitter, but I can easily say Ohtani is better overall solely because he doesn't just pitch, he's an elite pitcher when healthy. Yes, that "when healthy" qualifier is a strong one given it's been a constant issue, but still, 3.00 ERA/1.08 WHIP with 670 Ks in 528.2 IP.

That's elite production. It's not just a side show to his hitting. He could have a career path focusing exclusively on pitching or hitting and he would be paid handsomely to do so. The team that has him gets both, though.

I'll direct you to Bill Jenkinson, who thoroughly researched Ruth's home runs on a spray chart projecting every one of them to the dimensions of modern ballparks (as of 2007, which is when he authored his book). He concludes that his home run totals for 1921 alone and for his entire career, given modern ballpark dimensions for every American League park in which he played, would have been 104 and 1158, respectively, with the friendlier modern dimensions. Yes, the right field foul pole was closer, but "for every home run he gained to right field, Ruth lost at least three to center field and the adjoining power alleys." Center field was at least 490 feet from home plate during Babe Ruth's entire career at Yankee Stadium.

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#60 posts and no card.
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Another card...

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...058491feac.jpg

Sent from my SM-S926U using Tapatalk

Great card IMO. Here's my variation.

A couple of my favorite Ohtanis.
https://www.heavy45s.com/20240214_17...py_800x708.jpg
https://www.heavy45s.com/20251010_21...py_800x785.jpg

I would have voted "neither".

They both exist in different dimensions with their own gravitational rules.

We mere mortals are lucky that we are allowed to witness them.



Every high school has a guy who is the star pitcher, hitter, quarterback and basketball player, at some point they are all forced to pick a direction.

Every so often they don't (Bo, Dieon, etc.), but that's not the point.

Babe was one of the best pitchers in baseball. Then he set the all time record for home runs in a season (breaking a record that had stood for 35 years), switched teams, nearly doubled his own record the next year. Became the all time MLB HR leader the next year, a record he held for more than half a century, and only pitched 31 more inning in his career, while hitting 665 more homers.


Could Ruth have done specifically what Ohtani is doing?


Rick Wise threw a no-hitter while also hitting two homers. Was that a "better game"?

For sure -- but for the fact that it wasn't in the playoffs.

So we are in agreement that Wise had a better game EXCEPT for the timing.

Gravitational rules? Man this is turning into a heavy discussion. :eek:

You can’t go wrong with Ohtani or Judge if you were building a team but while Ruth played there was no other choice but Ruth. That’s what I mean by distance. If you ask who is the best player in baseball many people will say Ohtani and many will say Judge but you would have only heard Ruth.

People can debate who is a "better player" Ohtani or Judge, or Ohtani or Ruth till they are blue in the face. But there is no denying that Ohtani has done things that no one in the history of the game has ever done. Ruth made the sport what it is . . . Judge is a great hitter, has one clutch post season HR to his name . . . but they never had a night like what Ohtani did last night. A starting pitcher hit 3 homeruns. . . . that travelled an estimated 1,342 feet. A few other facts lifted from the Atlantic.

- Before last night, only 2 starting pitchers had 2 postseason HRs IN THEIR ENTIRE CAREERS. (Gibson, McNally)

- Only 3 players in baseball history had ever hit 3 HRs in a regular season game and thrown a pitch in a post season game IN THEIR CAREERS.

- Otani had more HRs last night than hits allowed

- First leadoff HR by a pitcher in any MLB baseball game ever as far as can be determined

- No pitcher in baseball history has struck out the side and hit a homerun in the same inning of a post season game

- Never hit 2 HRs in a post season game: Mays, Aaron, McGwire, Schmidt, Griffey Jr., and a few thousand other guys.

It's ONE GAME. On the pitching side, it wasn't even one game, it was what, six innings? Fine, he did 10,000 unique things in that one game. In fact he set a record for doing the MOST unique things in one game. That has almost no bearing on comparisons between him and Ruth.

There’s no doubt Ohtani is a generational talent. However, I feel he needs to have multiple more years of dominance before anointing him the greatest. That’s by no way of trying to diminish what he has already accomplished. Truly amazing thus far.

This. 1050 hits, a .282 average, and 39 pitching wins. Not quite the GOAT yet.

Sad part is that today people don't even care about full careers, just a peak for however many years.

What's his knuckleball like?

:confused:

the whole idea that participation was not limited to the elite athletes back then. If you've read the whole thread you have seen references to common Joes that Babe played against. If you don't subscribe to that theory that's different, but I think there's a kernel of truth to it.

And FFS is Ohtani still using an interpreter ?? You Americans are paying him 600 trillion dollars !!! He has enough money to buy California, Nevada, Oregon, etc., and he still doesn't know basic English ??

https://embed.filekitcdn.com/e/9KB1D...fRZX2ERSA4HHtX

Personally i think its still an organization pr thing. Maybe next season they will ease up on that. But also personally idgaf as long as he hits moon shots and piles up K’s. Good night until mañana .


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Ohtani can speak English, but isn't very confident and is unsophisticated with it's use.

He's given enough off-the-cuff unprepared short speeches and interviews in English to tell he's got somewhat of a grasp of the language. He probably doesn't want to sound like a caveman trying to give thoughtful responses to things.

And if another player is discovered who did any of these things that we somehow have missed we can always ask "did they do it on a Friday?"

Also, as great of a HR hitter as Ruth was, he still is no match West Sacramento's Nick Allen when it comes to the number of homers hit in the regular season in California!

Ohtani has unique skills but he is not the best pitcher in the league or the best hitter. There was nobody better than Ruth. He wasn’t the best pitcher in the league either but he was the supreme bat and the unanimous best player in the game.

We didn’t see a player even get close to Ruth’s elite bat until Bonds came along and he had to cheat to do it. Bonds was also a hitter Ohtani will never be.

Judge is a hitter Ohtani will never be either. It can’t be stressed enough how difficult it is to put up a 200 OPS+ season and Judge now has three of them. Ohtani has none.

Thx i own ten of them lol

Almost 3-1 vote for Ruth over Ohtani.

Shows most of us are old timers. Obviously almost no one living today ever saw Ruth play. The stats stand on their own.

I love Ruth but voted for Ohtani. I have seen him play. He is a one of a kind player.

However, without the DH, I seriously doubt he would be pitching and playing in the field daily in order to hit massive home runs. The toll on his body would be too great. Ruth certainly did not have that luxury when considering trying to do both.

Ruth is an icon. Ohtani probably will not be except in Japan.

The fact that this vote is so one sided for Ruth and we have all seen Ohtani play and likely never saw Ruth play proves that point at least among this small sample size.

Poll 25-35 year olds and the outcome would likely be skewed significantly toward Ohtani.

Cool debate! I'm surprised that Ohtani is polling as high as he is given that this is a vintage baseball card forum at heart.

Some things that I don't think are properly addressed on the Ruth side of the argument:

1) The quality of the overall competition in Ruth's era. I haven't heard any argument from Team Ruth to suggest that Ohtani doesn't have it much harder on a relative basis. On this basis alone, I think Ohtani wins.

2) Ohtani is neither the best pitcher nor the best hitter in the MLB today. Team Ohtani can probably agree that that is the case. Comparing Ohtani to Judge as a hitter is missing half the equation. There are a lot of guys who were 5-tool players (Judge isn't one of them, by the way), but none of them pitched. Pitching may as well be a second sport, because the training demands are so different. Ohtani is like the guy who wins a silver medal in the 400m hurdles and then also wins a bronze medal in the shot put -- in the same Olympics. When was the last time we've had a pitcher who was 1/10 the batter than Ohtani is? When was the last time we've had a hitter who was 1/10 the pitcher? In the same season.

3) The longevity fallacy. This relates to the quality of the overall competition. Hank Aaron was the last power hitter to have consistent excellence for more than 15 years. The reason? The level of competition and the width of the funnel on both the hitting and the pitching side in the modern game makes it extremely hard for even the most talented and hard working players to beat Father Time and keep up with a continuous flow of genetically gifted and well trained world class athletes (both hitters and pitchers) entering the game every year. It's much more relevant in the modern era to look at performance over a realistic peak period (say, 5-10 years), especially for power hitters.

Shohei Ohtani owns best performance in sports history? Think again.

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/article...121830948.html

Ohtani or Ruth?
 

OP is asking who is better.

All of you are talking about Most Accomplished.

I take “better” as more talented.

No one has been more talented than Shohei Ohtani in the sport of baseball.

Throws 100 mph, insane breaking stuff, and hits 50 bombs a year against pitchers also throwing 100 mph at him, often times seeing 3-4 pitchers a game

Ruth will always be King for Most Accomplished

But it’s okay to think guys 100+ years later are more talented.

But timing is everything. A no-pressure regular season game doesn't compare to the moment Ohtani had. Which makes his game so much better.

This is how I see it. When discussing "who is better" are we going by career accomplishments? Or who is more talented?

Ohtani is more talented. Ruth certainly accomplished more. I don't think either of these are really debatable.

I strongly disagree.

Lots of people who were born 50 years after Ruth died are experts in his raw talent level. Interesting.

His accomplishments are on paper. How his level of talent matches up to the best players today? It doesn't. Would be as silly as arguing that the best mile runner in 1934 or best field goal kicker in 1950 anyway be competitive today. They wouldn't.

Could Ruth have thrived today with all the advance in training, medicine, etc? Who tf knows. His bout with venereal disease wouldn't have helped.

This 🏆

Baseball had been played pretty hard for 50 years before Ruth showed up,
Just about Every type of organization had a team (Schools, towns, churches,business,etc many leagues with paid players) Not saying skills were up to today’s level but Players who made it to the major leagues were a lot better than your average janitor/plumber. As someone noted earlier though there’s a difference between best and greatest, but I still voted Ruth I guess because he did it for longer.

I liked it when they teamed up.

Ohtani is a babyfaced assassin. When I lived and worked in Japan in the 1970's, they didn't make them like him.

Yeah they did, but they were Yakuza.

Well, you would have a point that I could more easily agree with except for the pressure ramps up in a no-hitter, while it arguably ramps down when a team is on a roll, beating the crap out of another team in a best of seven series.

I'd like to see teams and players going back to those things.

Poor Mick. Imagine how tough it is to fight hangovers day-after-day just to be ready to play a game where you're sitting in a dugout almost half the time and just standing there most of the rest of the time.

:(