[robw1959]

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.

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