Hypothetical Question, could Ruth hit modern pitching

[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.
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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.