Ohtani or Ruth?

[Seven]

Originally Posted by bk400

Thanks for this. I took a look and I think I get most of the wRC+ math. I actually can't say for sure, but does wRC+ account for the quality of the peer group (in other words, the quality of the average player)?

If not, then Ruth's high wRC+ suggests that he is much better than his peers in terms of offensive production than Ohtani, but it doesn't necessarily speak to whether doing that is easier or harder than what Ohtani is doing today (156 wRC+) relative to his peers.

Which means it really isn't that helpful in comparing players across eras; it's just helpful in comparing players relative to the average players within their own eras.

Ruth may be more genetically gifted relative to his peers than Ohtani is to his. In fact, when you look at Ruth, who looked like a morbidly obese person during the off-season and perhaps just an obese person in-season, that's a very plausible explanation for his out performance.

Ohtani is doing what he is doing in an era when basically every player is genetically gifted and also training hard and not screwing around lifestyle-wise (at least in ways that are detrimental to performance). And, as has been stated many times, Ohtani is the only two-way player in his era (which speaks to its absolute and relative difficulty), while Ruth was one of many -- and perhaps not even the best (cue Martin Dihigo and Bullet Rogan).

I know it claims to be era and park adjusted, but unfortunately I think it's the best thing were going to find in terms of a number. I believe I said it earlier in the thread, we can only truly compare a player to his peers and in his era. Life is so different now.

Fangraphs does factor wRC+ for the Negro League players as well. Josh Gibson is the technical all time leader with a 202 wRC+ but due to the small sample sizes we have of his stats, as it's under 1500 games, I didn't think it should've been included.