Greatness Among Us!

[raulus]

Originally Posted by CJinPA

On the flip side, Ruth wasn't facing 3-4 pitchers each night who were fresh and throwing pills at 95 - 102 mph. Think of how many starting pitchers in his era went 9 innings/game, and threw 300+ innings/yr... humans haven't devolved since that era so in pre-war and beyond, the time a lineup got to their 3rd AB in a game, in mid-season, a lot of arms were worn. Never taking away anything from the stars and greats of that era, but it was completely different!

Good points here.

A few more observations (not to take away from the Bambino, but just some real differences in the game from 100 years ago ):

Ruth only faced AL pitching. There was no interleague play (other than the WS). 8 teams in the AL? And he didn’t face his own team’s pitchers. So the number of pitchers he faced during the season was limited. I suspect he got to know most of them really well.

The league wasn’t integrated, so he was only competing against maybe half of the available talent.

Spray charts and spin rates and all the modern analytics didn’t exist, which seems to benefit pitchers today.

Of course, there are any number of factors that cut the other way as well, some of which have been outlined already.

I could go on, but obviously while we attempt to compare players from vastly different eras, it can be difficult to really feel confident in those comparisons, even when the counting stats are this similar.