Hypothetical Question, could Ruth hit modern pitching

[rhettyeakley]

Originally Posted by Snowman

And before you guys chime in with "Walter Johnson threw 100 mph and Ruth could hit against him", I'll just say bullshit ahead of time lol. Walter Johnson want throwing anywhere near 100 mph. Most of the pitching in that era was in the 70 to 80 mph range. Guys throwing 80+ were throwing heat. WaJo might have touched 90. And I'd wager my right nut that he never once threw a ball above 92 mph.

So young kids that can hit 85-90+ in high school just didn’t exist back then? I went to high school in Maine and we faced Matt Kinney (eventually made the majors with the Twins) and he was routinely hitting 90+ then. Was there some training that a small town kid in Maine had in the 1990’s that was impossible in the 1910-30’s?

Did Something happen at some nebulous point in history that made humans able to throw faster?

I will never understand this logic.

[Peter_Spaeth]

In 1930 the world record for the mile was 4:10. It's now 3:43. Over the same time the shot put record has gone from 16+ meters to 23+ meters.

[rhettyeakley]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

In 1930 the world record for the mile was 4:10. It's now 3:43. Over the same time the shot put record has gone from 16+ meters to 23+ meters.

Weight training is far more advanced today than it was then and that is obviously true. Most workouts were calisthenics at the time and that combined with the unnatural things also done by those in strength sports has aided in a lot of the increase in the shotput record.those same things don’t help in all sports but there are obvious sports where the sports themselves hardly resemble the sport played 100 years ago or even 50 years ago…baseball is not that sport.

The mile time difference has a lot more to do with equipment and track conditions than you are giving it credit for but i think you know that

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by rhettyeakley

Weight training is far more advanced today than it was then and that is obviously true. Most workouts were calisthenics at the time and that combined with the unnatural things also done by those in strength sports has aided in a lot of the increase in the shotput record.those same things don’t help in all sports but there are obvious sports where the sports themselves hardly resemble the sport played 100 years ago or even 50 years ago…baseball is not that sport.

The mile time difference has a lot more to do with equipment and track conditions than you are giving it credit for but i think you know that

It feels to me like the notion that baseball is somehow unique and exempt from the patterns we see in other sports is a romantic one. Just my opinion. Athletes get better over time and I don't see baseball as an exception.

[rhettyeakley]

These were The tracks that Jesse Owens and all those before the 1960’s ran on…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinder_track

These were his shoes, the track and the [lack of] starting blocks(see attached images)

I get that you hold the eternal contrarian POV Peter but you are being silly comparing Jesse Owens times directly to a modern High Schooler.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by rhettyeakley

These were The tracks that Jesse Owens and all those before the 1960’s ran on…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinder_track

These were his shoes, the track and the [lack of] starting blocks(see attached images)

I get that you hold the eternal contrarian POV Peter but you are being silly comparing Jesse Owens times directly to a modern High Schooler.

I think this is what you are referring to

https://everything-everywhere.com/je...20in%20history.

All of these things were actually put into a test that was run by the CBC in Canada. They got Olympic sprinter Andre De Grasse to run under similar conditions as Jesse Owens. De Grasse was a bronze medalist at the 2016 Olympics in the 100m

How fast did he run under these conditions? He ran the 100m in 11 seconds,

That is .8 seconds slower than Jesse Owens personal best.

[71buc]

The elite athletes born in any generation could compete in every generation with all things being equal. If you plucked Ruth or Cobb from their eras and dropped them in a game today they would be average at best. If they were born in 1995 and provided with the same training, nutrition, technology, and opportunity they would absolutely be stars. I think you can say that in virtually every sport. Baseball is an international game now. The pool of talent from which to draw from is much larger. Due to that I believe many of the role players and other average players from that era would not make major league rosters. Foxx “The Beast” was 6’ 195lbs. Todays average player is 6’2” 207.

I always thought it was a more entertaining question to pick a player like Griffey Jr., Aaron Judge, Rickey Henderson, Randy Johnson, or Ohtani and drop them via Time Machine in 1927 and watch them compete.

[jsfriedm]

From Joe Posnanski's Baseball 100 on The Athletic https://theathletic.com/1708673/2020...lter-johnson/:

"How fast did Johnson actually throw? Let’s go down that rabbit hole for a minute, even though we can’t know for sure. Johnson always said that his ability to throw hard was just natural. “From the time I held a ball, it settled in the palm of my right hand as though it belonged there,” he said.

And while we can’t tell you exactly how fast the ball went, we do have a clue. Johnson was the first pitcher to have his fastball’s speed measured. True, it was measured by an archaic (and ingenious) apparatus developed by the Remington Arms Company. But it’s something. Remington had developed the machine to time the speed of bullets. Johnson’s fastball seemed the obvious next thing.

Johnson and another pitcher, Nap Rucker, showed up in a large room at the Remington lab in Connecticut. The scientists had him stand 60 feet, 6 inches away and throw his fastball through a mesh square. The ball would brush through the mesh, triggering the clock. Then, 15 feet later, the ball would slam into a metal plate, stopping the clock. Johnson’s fastball covered that distance in .1229 seconds, which means that it traveled 122 feet per second.*

*Rucker topped out at 113 feet per second.

This became a pretty famous measurement of the time: 122 feet per second! That’s fast! As newspapers reported in the day, “The Twentieth Century Limited, flying at a mile a minute gait over the rails, makes only 88 feet per second!” He threw it faster than a train!

This was not the reason Johnson was called Big Train, by the way. We’ll get to that.

What is 122 feet per second as we would understand it now?

It is 83.2 miles per hour.

It’s OK to feel let down. But the story isn’t over yet.

First, there’s the measurement point. As mentioned above when talking about how fast Feller and Ryan really threw, the speed of today’s pitchers is measured out of the hand. Feller’s pitch was measured as it crossed the plate. But Johnson’s pitch was measured seven and a half feet after it crossed the plate.

So, that requires a major adjustment. The “Fastball” physicists did the calculations and found that today Walter Johnson’s pitch would actually be measured at 94 mph or so.

That’s obviously very fast, though it certainly would not make anyone in today’s game back away. But there’s more: Johnson threw the ball with a shirt and tie on. He did not throw off of a mound. And most of all, he did not throw as hard as he could because he was trying to guide his pitches through the target. It was an awkward thing, and it took him numerous tries to get it right.

“He didn’t throw full speed or anything close,” Rucker said after the experiment. “If he had, he would have thrown over 150 feet per second.”

For the record, 150 feet per second is more than 102 mph. In church clothes. On flat ground."

[Yoda]

I was thinking of Babe Herman who swung a mighty bat but had difficulty making a simple PO. He would have been perfect for the DH rule.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

These questions bother me more than they should. Humans have NOT evolved in the 5 or so generations from 1900 to today. The differences are in nutrition, health, training etc.

So could 1927 Babe Ruth hit today's pitching? Maybe.

But could Babe Ruth born in 1995 and able to avail himself of everything players today have at their disposal hit today's pitching. Of freaking course he could.

[JollyElm]

JurassicParkGoldblumBabeRuth.jpg

[jingram058]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

These questions bother me more than they should. Humans have NOT evolved in the 5 or so generations from 1900 to today. The differences are in nutrition, health, training etc.

So could 1927 Babe Ruth hit today's pitching? Maybe.

But could Babe Ruth born in 1995 and able to avail himself of everything players today have at their disposal hit today's pitching. Of freaking course he could.

"Nutrition, health, training etc." are way, way overrated. These guys stub their toe or get a blister, and they go on the IL, all the while collecting millions upon millions of dollars.

I will leave this discussion with this, and some of you aren't going to like it.

You guys are obviously highly, highly educated and successful in life by any measure. How else could you afford the very expensive cards we all love?

Why, then, this weird fixation on the pitching in the 1920s and 30s as crazily inferior, while trying to justify the pitching of today?

Do you realize how you make yourselves sound in doing this?

Let me reiterate - I played high school and American Legion baseball, and I know how fast the pitching was. I am almost 66 years old. There is a huge outdoor recreation area/amusement park maybe 5 miles from where I live that has go-karts, mini golf, driving range and, among other things, very sophisticated baseball batting cages that ALL the high school teams around here regularly utilize. They have pee wee, junior high, high school, minor and major. As a form of exercise and stress relief, I regularly use the high school cage, 78 mph. Minor is 84, and major is 90. I can hit 78 even now at 66, and I'm just some schmo. I can occasionally foul one or two off in the minor cage. The safety monitors won't even allow me into major.

Please, please, PLEASE...for the love of God...stop saying that the MAJOR LEAGUE pitching in the 1920s and 30s and 40s and 50s was 70/80 mph.

I break out in laughter when you write that insanely dumb stuff. You truly have no realization as to what you're saying, how incredibly dumb it sounds. I wasn't around, I don't know, but with a grand total of 16 teams in all the major leagues, and after hearing that Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove, Bob Feller, and on and on and on, when they bore down the ball made a certain "zzzzzz" noise as it went by. That's the heat, folks. That's what it sounds like. 70/80 mph? That insults my intelligence.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by jingram058

Please, please, PLEASE...for the love of God...stop saying that the MAJOR LEAGUE pitching in the 1920s and 30s and 40s and 50s was 70/80 mph.

I break out in laughter when you write that insanely dumb stuff. You truly have no realization as to what you're saying, how incredibly dumb it sounds. I wasn't around, I don't know, but with a grand total of 16 teams in all the major leagues, and after hearing that Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove, Bob Feller, and on and on and on, when they bore down the ball made a certain "zzzzzz" noise as it went by. That's the heat, folks. That's what it sounds like. 70/80 mph? That insults my intelligence.

I think you're not quite understanding my claim, or perhaps I didn't state it clearly enough rather. I'm not saying that the best arms during that era were only capable of pitches in the 70-80 mph range. I'm claiming that the MEDIAN pitch speed that these hitters saw was likely in the high 70s, low 80s. It's really not that much of a stretch. Median pitch speeds mean half the balls they faced were above that speed, and half were below. This would include fastballs and off-speed pitches. As a point of comparison, even the median fastball when Ken Griffey Jr. was called up in 1989 was about 87 mph. That's 1989. So the median pitch speed (fastballs & off-speed pitches) was certainly lower than that. Likely low 80s. Saying that the median pitching speeds from the 1920s was likely in the high 70s isn't exactly a stretch and it's almost certainly true.

You seem more interested in what the top speeds that the best pitchers were capable of, which is a different question. I think there were likely several guys throwing mid to high 80s fastballs, with a few elite arms like Walter Johnson touching low 90s. But none of these guys were capable of 100 mph. Sorry, but that simply wasn't happening back then. 50 oz bats would not have been used by anyone if they were facing 100 mph pitching. It's simply not possible for anyone to turn on pitches that fast with lumber that heavy.

Originally Posted by jingram058

...As a form of exercise and stress relief, I regularly use the high school cage, 78 mph. Minor is 84, and major is 90. I can hit 78 even now at 66, and I'm just some schmo. I can occasionally foul one or two off in the minor cage. The safety monitors won't even allow me into major.

I think this is an interesting note you've made here. You can hit 78 mph pitching with some sort of relative consistency, but dial that up by just 6 mph and what previously had been a relatively easy, or at least achievable, task has now become so challenging that you can barely get a foul tip on the ball at those speeds. A few mph really does make all the difference in the world at the plate. This is precisely what this debate is all about. We know these hitters from the 1920s were hitting slower pitching. Hell, just from the time Griffey was called up in 1989 to what hitters are facing today on average, the median fastball has gone up by more than 6 mph. That's a remarkable jump. And the pitchers from the 1920s to 1989 were even a bigger jump than that. The median fastball today is without question AT LEAST 10-12 mph faster than it was in the 1920s. And a difference of 10-12 mph is, as you've noted, significant enough for someone capable of hitting 78 mph pitching to not even be allowed in the cage by the safety personnel at your local batting cage. That's how big of a difference the pitching was that these guys were facing in the 1920s vs what guys are facing today. It's a completely different game.

Could some of the best hitters from that era have adjusted to faster pitching and still been star players? Sure, absolutely. Some of them would. But some of them also wouldn't. Which players could and which players couldn't is anyone's guess. But I don't think it's as simple as just rank ordering the players and saying all the best ones would have still been great. It's not a linear transition. Some guys can just absolutely destroy 91 mph pitching, but they can't hit 100 mph. This is why top prospects fail so often. More so than in any other sport.

And since I like data, here's a plot of median fastball speeds from 2002 to 2019.
...

[Carter08]

The current thinking in baseball seems to be roll through as many pitchers as you need in a game to make sure the team is always pitching well into the 90s. The increased torque required for that seems to result in increased injuries and surgeries. Personal observation but I would guess it’s supported somewhere. I imagine many great hitters of the past would be able to catch up to the speed with training but in their day they most likely never had to think about facing a 100mph pitch, much less a constant barrage of them.

[robw1959]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I think you're not quite understanding my claim, or perhaps I didn't state it clearly enough rather. I'm not saying that the best arms during that era were only capable of pitches in the 70-80 mph range. I'm claiming that the MEDIAN pitch speed that these hitters saw was likely in the high 70s, low 80s. It's really not that much of a stretch. Median pitch speeds mean half the balls they faced were above that speed, and half were below. This would include fastballs and off-speed pitches. As a point of comparison, even the median fastball when Ken Griffey Jr. was called up in 1989 was about 87 mph. That's 1989. So the median pitch speed (fastballs & off-speed pitches) was certainly lower than that. Likely low 80s. Saying that the median pitching speeds from the 1920s was likely in the high 70s isn't exactly a stretch and it's almost certainly true.

You seem more interested in what the top speeds that the best pitchers were capable of, which is a different question. I think there were likely several guys throwing mid to high 80s fastballs, with a few elite arms like Walter Johnson touching low 90s. But none of these guys were capable of 100 mph. Sorry, but that simply wasn't happening back then. 50 oz bats would not have been used by anyone if they were facing 100 mph pitching. It's simply not possible for anyone to turn on pitches that fast with lumber that heavy.




I think this is an interesting note you've made here. You can hit 78 mph pitching with some sort of relative consistency, but dial that up by just 6 mph and what previously had been a relatively easy, or at least achievable, task has now become so challenging that you can barely get a foul tip on the ball at those speeds. A few mph really does make all the difference in the world at the plate. This is precisely what this debate is all about. We know these hitters from the 1920s were hitting slower pitching. Hell, just from the time Griffey was called up in 1989 to what hitters are facing today on average, the median fastball has gone up by more than 6 mph. That's a remarkable jump. And the pitchers from the 1920s to 1989 were even a bigger jump than that. The median fastball today is without question AT LEAST 10-12 mph faster than it was in the 1920s. And a difference of 10-12 mph is, as you've noted, significant enough for someone capable of hitting 78 mph pitching to not even be allowed in the cage by the safety personnel at your local batting cage. That's how big of a difference the pitching was that these guys were facing in the 1920s vs what guys are facing today. It's a completely different game.

Could some of the best hitters from that era have adjusted to faster pitching and still been star players? Sure, absolutely. Some of them would. But some of them also wouldn't. Which players could and which players couldn't is anyone's guess. But I don't think it's as simple as just rank ordering the players and saying all the best ones would have still been great. It's not a linear transition. Some guys can just absolutely destroy 91 mph pitching, but they can't hit 100 mph. This is why top prospects fail so often. More so than in any other sport.

And since I like data, here's a plot of median fastball speeds from 2002 to 2019.
...

Later in his career, Ruth, knowing he needed a timing edge against fastballs, switched to a much lighter bat and got even better homerun results than what he got with the big stick.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

In 1930 the world record for the mile was 4:10. It's now 3:43. Over the same time the shot put record has gone from 16+ meters to 23+ meters.

Training plans and how weight training is used has also changed drastically over that same time. As has technique.

Here's a video showing shot put over about a century. You can see the gradual transition from everyone using a slide step, to nearly everyone using the current rotary approach. Plus differences in both techniques.
The guys winning modern competitions with the slide step are amazing, but obviously have weight trained for explosiveness compared to the earlier competitors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDslPFs3Irw&t=281s

The old idea was that in many althletic areas weight training just added mass and hurt speed and flexibility. Done right, that hasn't been a thing for a long time.

[steve B]

Here are a few things that are worth considering.

What makes a great hitter great?

One hard data item and one anecdote. between the two they cross generations.

Albert Pujols did some tests for someone in a lab setting. They first tested his reaction time, expecting his to be much faster than an average person. It was not, in fact his reaction time was very much in the average range.
So why is he an excellent hitter?
The next test was flashing pictures of a pitcher throwing a variety of pitches.
I don't recall exactly, but the image was shown either very briefly, or until he pressed a button. (All this is in a SI article from a few years ago)
He was not only far faster than average at identifying pitches, but could also tell location from a very briefly seen still picture. Far faster than even decent college hitters, and far far faster than fairly random people including ones who had better reaction times.

The second is more anecdotal, but I believe it says a lot.

The club I was in had a speaker who had played as a player when Ted Williams was managing.
The first year he said was wonderful, Ted focused on fundamentals like waiting for a good pitch. Team batting improved.

Year two he started losing them.
They asked one time for advice on hitting Nolan Ryan.
Teds advice was - early in the game I'd try to hit the top of the ball and drive it somewhere. Later I'd try to hit the bottom of the ball to try and get more distance.
which the speaker said was not helpful as most of the guys were asking how to hit pitches they couldn't really see.

From those things, I'd say the most important part of hitting is having that ability to see and interpret what is being seen quickly enough and well enough. And I have to think that all the top hitters since the beginning have had that ability. So a Ruth or a Williams or anyone else at that sort of level would still be a top hitter today.
That might be different for the typical player.
The other part of the Williams thing was that one of the players just neve rreally got it. To the point that one game Williams stood at the top of the dugout steps yelling out what pitch was coming and the guy still couldn't hit.
Yes, that must have also been a major distraction...

[Tere1071]

Originally Posted by steve B

Here are a few things that are worth considering.

What makes a great hitter great?

One hard data item and one anecdote. between the two they cross generations.

Albert Pujols did some tests for someone in a lab setting. They first tested his reaction time, expecting his to be much faster than an average person. It was not, in fact his reaction time was very much in the average range.
So why is he an excellent hitter?
The next test was flashing pictures of a pitcher throwing a variety of pitches.
I don't recall exactly, but the image was shown either very briefly, or until he pressed a button. (All this is in a SI article from a few years ago)
He was not only far faster than average at identifying pitches, but could also tell location from a very briefly seen still picture. Far faster than even decent college hitters, and far far faster than fairly random people including ones who had better reaction times.

The second is more anecdotal, but I believe it says a lot.

The club I was in had a speaker who had played as a player when Ted Williams was managing.
The first year he said was wonderful, Ted focused on fundamentals like waiting for a good pitch. Team batting improved.

Year two he started losing them.
They asked one time for advice on hitting Nolan Ryan.
Teds advice was - early in the game I'd try to hit the top of the ball and drive it somewhere. Later I'd try to hit the bottom of the ball to try and get more distance.
which the speaker said was not helpful as most of the guys were asking how to hit pitches they couldn't really see.

From those things, I'd say the most important part of hitting is having that ability to see and interpret what is being seen quickly enough and well enough. And I have to think that all the top hitters since the beginning have had that ability. So a Ruth or a Williams or anyone else at that sort of level would still be a top hitter today.
That might be different for the typical player.
The other part of the Williams thing was that one of the players just neve rreally got it. To the point that one game Williams stood at the top of the dugout steps yelling out what pitch was coming and the guy still couldn't hit.
Yes, that must have also been a major distraction...

I forgot where I read this, but it was an article about Ruth's ability to hit home runs. Sometime at his peak, a group of academics decided to time Ruth's reaction to an incoming pitch when he swung. According to their findings, Ruth was fractionally quicker when he swung in comparison to other hitters that were measured.

Considering that the methods and tools used in this test were barbaric in comparison to today's standards, we would have to guess what the speed of his reaction time would be today. Let's say that we transported Ruth to the time when Pujols reaction time was tested. If Ruth took that same test and still maintained a quicker reaction time than the average ballplayer of today, he would possibly have a chance to peform well. In any era, that reaction time would give an advantage to any hitter. Yes, there are other factors, plate discipline, the type of swing, etc. that influence the possible outcome of any at bat. This is not to conclude that Ruth would still produce the same outcomes in the modern era as he did during career, but that potential remains.

Phil aka Tere1071

Complete 1953 Bowman Color, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, and 1975 Topps Baseball sets under revision as the budget and wife allows

Under construction:
1967 Topps Baseball - 330/533: Overall p-g, missing all of the bigger name stars and many commons, no high numbers or posters

1968 Topps Baseball - 420/598: Overall good, missing all of the bigger name stars and many commons from 1-375; no game cards

1969 Topps Baseball - 320-664: Overall good, missing all of the stars and many cards after #217; no deckle edged cards

1969 Topps Baseball Team Stamps- Dodgers, Royals, A’s, Phillies; missing everything else

1970 Topps Baseball Insert sets:
Booklets- missing 7; 9; 11; 13; 14; 15; 17; and 23.
Posters # 1; 8; 14; 17; and 19
I do not have any 1970 scratch offs yet.

1971 Topps Coins- 120/153
I do not have any 1971 scratch offs yet.

1974 Topps Baseball Washington variations- 32; 53; 77; 102; 125; 226; 241; 309; 364; and 599

[Touch'EmAll]

You have to at least give the old dudes credit for not having the modern medical and technological advantages. To simply just teleport Ruth to today as he was in his prime playing days - and then figure if he could play or not is almost not worthy of discussion. Now if we are going to teleport Ruth as a child, give him all the medical and technological advancements of today from his youth to playing days adult, now we might have a legit conversation.

[packs]

Why isn’t there one already? Is there anything you can point to that isn’t a natural ability of Ruth’s? I don’t see any reason to suggest he couldn’t hit a baseball thrown faster. Being that he played in the era of spitballs I’m not really seeing any evidence for him not being able to hit breaking balls. He hit 342 over his career without striking out more than 93 times in a season.

He could hit the ball. And he broke the mold without any intervention from anyone else. He did everything he did with only natural instincts and no analytics or coaching. He was born Babe Ruth and I still fail to see any reason why his skills wouldn’t translate to any time he lived. To me he represents the pinnacle of ability. The most elite player among the elite.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by packs

Why isn’t there one already? Is there anything you can point to that isn’t a natural ability of Ruth’s? I don’t see any reason to suggest he couldn’t hit a baseball thrown faster. Being that he played in the era of spitballs I’m not really seeing any evidence for him not being able to hit breaking balls. He hit 342 over his career without striking out more than 93 times in a season.

He could hit the ball. And he broke the mold without any intervention from anyone else. He did everything he did with only natural instincts and no analytics or coaching. He was born Babe Ruth and I still fail to see any reason why his skills wouldn’t translate to any time he lived. To me he represents the pinnacle of ability. The most elite player among the elite.

Being the greatest of all time does not really speak to how he would fare after 100 years of gains in human performance though, if the hypothetical involves taking him just as he was and beaming him into the present.

[packs]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Being the greatest of all time does not really speak to how he would fare after 100 years of gains in human performance though, if the hypothetical involves taking him just as he was and beaming him into the present.

Sure but that's what I'm asking. What couldn't he do? And why not? This is a guy who rolled out of bed as Babe Ruth. If the hypothetical is placing him in today's game where he'd probably be playing at an elite prep school during his adolescence and surrounded by elite coaching with modern analytics, why wouldn't you think he'd be even better? If that was even possible.

[jakebeckleyoldeagleeye]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

In 1930 the world record for the mile was 4:10. It's now 3:43. Over the same time the shot put record has gone from 16+ meters to 23+ meters.

And how shot putters have been banned for roids?

[Lucas00]

Originally Posted by rhettyeakley

So young kids that can hit 85-90+ in high school just didn’t exist back then? I went to high school in Maine and we faced Matt Kinney (eventually made the majors with the Twins) and he was routinely hitting 90+ then. Was there some training that a small town kid in Maine had in the 1990’s that was impossible in the 1910-30’s?

Did Something happen at some nebulous point in history that made humans able to throw faster?

I will never understand this logic.

In all honesty the competition was possibly higher back then due to the immense popularity of baseball. More kids played and discovered their natural gifts. The odds of a kid in 1920 discovering their natural ability to throw a baseball 90 mph is far higher than today.

You're talking most small towns in America were fielding full teams easily. And on top of that company and factory teams lined the streets.

If you were a Male in the 20th century between the ages of 15-40 you had a very high chance of being on a serious ball club.

The only thing separating today's players from back then is the time taken to train and practice etc. Sure they are more advanced today. But if we gave the slew of guys 100 years ago the bare bones of what we do today for training we would get slaughtered, their periods best vs ours. It would simply be a numbers game, and we would lose. We have the science today to win but it doesn't mean we are better at baseball.


This isn't even mentioning the sharp decrease in male testosterone in the last few decades.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Lucas00

In all honesty the competition was possibly higher back then due to the immense popularity of baseball. More kids played and discovered their natural gifts. The odds of a kid in 1920 discovering their natural ability to throw a baseball 90 mph is far higher than today.

You're talking most small towns in America were fielding full teams easily. And on top of that company and factory teams lined the streets.

If you were a Male in the 20th century between the ages of 15-40 you had a very high chance of being on a serious ball club.

The only thing separating today's players from back then is the time taken to train and practice etc. Sure they are more advanced today. But if we gave the slew of guys 100 years ago the bare bones of what we do today for training we would get slaughtered, their periods best vs ours. It would simply be a numbers game, and we would lose. We have the science today to win but it doesn't mean we are better at baseball.


This isn't even mentioning the sharp decrease in male testosterone in the last few decades.

Your hypothesis isn't even true though. Today, baseball is a global sport. Back then, it wasn't. Also, there were only about 2 billion people alive in 1920. Today, there are over 8 billion. Athletes are drawn from MUCH larger pools today. Also, the financial incentives today for the best athletes to pursue a career as an athlete is remarkably higher than it was back then. Many of the best athletes in the 1920s simply weren't playing pro ball. They were providing for their families by other means. And then there's the fact that integration hadn't even happened yet.

[Lucas00]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Your hypothesis isn't even true though. Today, baseball is a global sport. Back then, it wasn't. Also, there were only about 2 billion people alive in 1920. Today, there are over 8 billion. Athletes are drawn from MUCH larger pools today. Also, the financial incentives today for the best athletes to pursue a career as an athlete is remarkably higher than it was back then. Many of the best athletes in the 1920s simply weren't playing pro ball. They were providing for their families by other means. And then there's the fact that integration hadn't even happened yet.

Baseball was a global sport from the beginning, South American baseball roots go back nearly as far as american. Same with Japan.
So you're wrong there.

I would almost bet everything I own in saying 100 years ago there were more people playing baseball than today. Photos and postcards from literally every corner of north and south america and Japan prove this. Cards as well. You're talking company baseball teams across the country are the norm. When is the last time you've seen a company baseball team? Never in this lifetime. Navy ships had teams, Army bases had teams, hell they had a field on Alcatraz (granted they used a softball). You could travel across the United States on a train and get off anywhere inhabited and have a very high chance of catching a game, if not that day the next.

Baseball essentially isn't played in India, China (The majority of the population rise being these two countries.) Africa or Much of Europe. So, well over half of the world doesn't even have a field, aside from maybe some big cities. Certainly nothing local.

Not sure what integration has to do with my statement, just because they were on all black teams doesn't mean they weren't equally as capable of beating players today.

The monetary point is your best, it's kind of true but on a very small scale. Most people even kids know this will never make them money.

[rhettyeakley]

Interesting hypothetical question that always gets heated.

Nobody will ever know the answer but that doesn’t stop all of us from making our opinions I suppose, some more right than others! 🤣

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by rhettyeakley

So young kids that can hit 85-90+ in high school just didn’t exist back then? I went to high school in Maine and we faced Matt Kinney (eventually made the majors with the Twins) and he was routinely hitting 90+ then. Was there some training that a small town kid in Maine had in the 1990’s that was impossible in the 1910-30’s?

Did Something happen at some nebulous point in history that made humans able to throw faster?

I will never understand this logic.

Just because we didn't have radar guns back then doesn't mean we can't make fairly accurate retrodictions about how fast pitchers were throwing during that era. Anecdotally, we know that guys were pitching complete games with regularity, and were even on the mound in back to back games sometimes. Yet they rarely got injured. But it's not because they had magic ligaments, it's because they weren't creating enough torque to damage their arms. We also know that players like Ruth and Hornsby were swinging 50 oz bats! That's truly bonkers. If you tried to swing a bat that heavy against today's pitching, you'd never get a hit. You simply wouldn't have time to get the bat around. We also have video footage of what can only be described now as suboptimal, if not outright silly, pitching forms from numerous players. Guys practically playing catch.

But we don't even need those sorts of observations to know that guys weren't throwing nearly as hard back then. We can look at the peak of human performance in other sports which we do have measurements for like discuss, shot put, and javelin events at the Olympics. We can sit and hypothesize about how and why humans have evolved to become stronger and faster over the last 100 years, but the fact is we have for one reason or another. And that's absolutely irrefutable.

[rhettyeakley]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Yet they rarely got injured. But it's not because they had magic ligaments, it's because they weren't creating enough torque to damage their arms.

100% comically false statement. You really think with the rudimentary understanding of medicine they had then (compared to now) that more players didn’t get seriously injured or throw out their arms?

There were tons of players that got “dead arms” as they used to call it.

There many players would have a few good seasons in the majors or minors and then disappear. Smokey Joe Wood being a very prominent example.

[robw1959]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Just because we didn't have radar guns back then doesn't mean we can't make fairly accurate retrodictions about how fast pitchers were throwing during that era. Anecdotally, we know that guys were pitching complete games with regularity, and were even on the mound in back to back games sometimes. Yet they rarely got injured. But it's not because they had magic ligaments, it's because they weren't creating enough torque to damage their arms. We also know that players like Ruth and Hornsby were swinging 50 oz bats! That's truly bonkers. If you tried to swing a bat that heavy against today's pitching, you'd never get a hit. You simply wouldn't have time to get the bat around. We also have video footage of what can only be described now as suboptimal, if not outright silly, pitching forms from numerous players. Guys practically playing catch.

But we don't even need those sorts of observations to know that guys weren't throwing nearly as hard back then. We can look at the peak of human performance in other sports which we do have measurements for like discuss, shot put, and javelin events at the Olympics. We can sit and hypothesize about how and why humans have evolved to become stronger and faster over the last 100 years, but the fact is we have for one reason or another. And that's absolutely irrefutable.

I don't buy into that stuff for a second. The theory that is bandied about that pitchers weren't really giving it their all just doesn't make any sense to me. Somehow, they weren't as competitive back then? Come on! Where is the evidence for that? And to compare progressive track and field records to pitching performances to infer that they have progressed as well doesn't make much sense either.