The GOAT of baseball?

[coltsnsox07]

Babe Ruth hit 714 homers and had an ERA of 2.28 pitching, all the while smoking up to 20 cigars a day, eating multiple porterhouse steaks for dinner and a pint of whisky every morning, after staying out all night carousing.

[6celtics33]

Originally Posted by calmar

I don't know what list you were looking at, but the list I just looked at showed 7 of the top 35 integration-era pitchers being Latin American or African American. We're not just talking about Black pitchers, and the comparison group would be with 1950s-and-later pitchers, not Cy Young and Grover Gleveland.

And the idea that Negro League players were nothing special besides Paige and Gibson is just grossly ignorant. My God. Jackie Robinson was not considered one of the very best Negro League players, and he ended up taking the Majors by storm. Larry Doby led the Negro Leagues in OPS in 1946, and then again in the American League in 1950. Monte Irvin's stats in 1951 with the NY Giants, when he led the National League in RBI, were virtually identical to his 1946-1948 stats in the Negro Leagues. Don Newcombe was unremarkable as a 19 year old Negro League pitcher, then took a few years off, and then was the N.L. ROY and immediate All Star for the Dodgers every year from 1949 to 1951. And Paige was an All Star in the Majors twice, at ages 45 and 46.

Is this really the discussion we have to have in 2026?

I’ll show you I googled top 100 starting pitchers of all time and clicked on the link below. And to be clear I was talking about pitchers because that’s who Ruth would’ve faced. So Paige and Bob Gibson not Josh.

Sorry you took this as a racial affront. I’m only trying to point out most of the great pitchers were white all time which is objectively true so trying to use the fact that Ruth hit off white pitchers doesn’t make him worse to me. That’s all.

https://thebaseballscholar.com/2019/...s-of-all-time/

[imbluestreak23]

Originally Posted by Imnottheonly

That seems a stretch. Let’s say that Ohtani every year for the rest of his career were to equal his single best WAR season of his career so far which is 10 (combining batting and pitching WAR) he would need to continue at that pace of 10 WAR a year for 13 years so until he’s 45 to equal Ruth. It’s far more likely he fails to reach 100 WAR than it is for him to finish within 50 WAR of Ruth’s total.

The gap is still going to be massive from a pure numbers perspective and the argument for eras doesn’t really hold up because it’s impossible to forecast how Ruth would perform in the modern day or Ohtani in Ruth’s age. The MVP award argument also pointless because during Ruth’s time a player could only win the award once and then was ineligible, a rule that didn’t go away until late in his career.

Could Ohtani “challenge” Ruth, maybe? But highly improbable.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I loved WAR when it first came out, but in this context, it needs to be thrown out in the trash and taken off to the dumpster.

[rnocards]

Originally Posted by coltsnsox07

Babe Ruth hit 714 homers and had an ERA of 2.28 pitching, all the while smoking up to 20 cigars a day, eating multiple porterhouse steaks for dinner and a pint of whisky every morning, after staying out all night carousing.

He also had a 0.342 lifetime batting average... which is crazy.

He's the only player in history to have hit over 700 HR and have over 0.340 BA, besides the dominance in pitching ERA.

He was just different.... in a class all by himself.

[Imnottheonly]

Originally Posted by imbluestreak23

I loved WAR when it first came out, but in this context, it needs to be thrown out in the trash and taken off to the dumpster.

Why? Because it calls into question that the gap between Ohtani and the greatest players who've ever played the game?

It isn't a perfect metric and it shouldn't be the end all of the discussion, but if you look at a list of the top 20 players, in terms of WAR, all time. Then compare it alongside the average list of top 20 players all time the overlap will be significant. Which tells us that WAR is at least a decent approximation of a players all time standing in the history of the game.

So if WAR is at least a decent approximation of a players career value then to treat the notion of two players whose WAR totals are likely to be separated by 80+ WAR as trash seems pretty silly.

Saying that Ohtani isn't the greatest to ever play isn't an insult. He can be an amazing player, he can be a unique talent, he can have an amazing peak rivaled by few, but at the same time he can also not be one of the top 5 players ever to play the game.

[Absknicks]

Only makes sense to judge players what they did relative to their peers during their respective times. So with that in mind, I'll say Ruth.

Hitting as many homers as the rest of the league combined in a given season is so otherworldly dominant it's silly to even try and find a corollary in the modern game.

[Noles939913]

Originally Posted by JustinVerlander07

He did test positive for a stimulant. What was the stimulant? How did THIS one help him? He wasn't using steroids, you think a STIMULANT is helping you hit home runs at 42? Come on dude. All these guys are on stimulants in 2026. They have doctors notes now lol

Of course being on speed helps you hit HRs.

What does the year 2026 have to do with Bonds?

The benefits of years of steroid use don’t magically disappear the moment you stop taking them.

[imbluestreak23]

Originally Posted by Imnottheonly

Why? Because it calls into question that the gap between Ohtani and the greatest players who've ever played the game?

It isn't a perfect metric and it shouldn't be the end all of the discussion, but if you look at a list of the top 20 players, in terms of WAR, all time. Then compare it alongside the average list of top 20 players all time the overlap will be significant. Which tells us that WAR is at least a decent approximation of a players all time standing in the history of the game.

So if WAR is at least a decent approximation of a players career value then to treat the notion of two players whose WAR totals are likely to be separated by 80+ WAR as trash seems pretty silly.

Saying that Ohtani isn't the greatest to ever play isn't an insult. He can be an amazing player, he can be a unique talent, he can have an amazing peak rivaled by few, but at the same time he can also not be one of the top 5 players ever to play the game.

It is theoretically possible for the greatest player of all time to play 20 years and have a career WAR of, say, 20, hypothetically.

I know many don't understand this, but it's true.

Posted in another thread:

Originally Posted by imbluestreak23

GOAT argument focused exclusively on WAR is the most disingenuous way to have a GOAT argument while not acknowledging the flaws of WAR.

Case in point: let me create my own artificial "good" scale of baseball player using some artificial scoring system ranging from 0-100. Hypothetically, the OP is a tremendous fan of some old boomer player who played during the 30s. Fantastic. Using my fictitious scoring system, let's analyze the 30s.

1930s Average Player ranking using ficticious scoring system: 35
1930s OPs Favorite GOAT Boomer player using fictitious scoring system: 70

GREAT! GOAT level player is quite literally woth DOUBLE the average player, or put another is way "twice as good" as the average layer. AMAZING! Fast forward to modern day times.

2025 Average Player ranking using fictitious scoring system: 60
2025 My Favorite GOAT player using fictitious scoring system: 90

Aww, my player is only 50% more valuable than modern competition. While the old boomer GOAT candidate is 100% more valuable than average competition! But, per my ficticious scoring system, my modern day GOAT player is still "better" than the boomer 30's candidate.

In short, standard WAR measures value relative to contemporaries, so a player's raw talent might be higher today, but their relative dominance over their peers (and thus their WAR) might be lower than a past star who was in a less competitive environment. This is entirely logical and has been discussed on sports card message boards since Trout popularized WAR use

[larry25]

Originally Posted by carlo16

The comparing era’s thing makes my head hurt.

It’s
Ruth
Gretzky
Jordan

Case closed. Football is a different animal. The best GoAT debate in sports is Jack and Tiger.

Could also say it's Pele and Messi. But it feels like there aren't many soccer fans here.

[larry25]

Originally Posted by coltsnsox07

Babe Ruth hit 714 homers and had an ERA of 2.28 pitching, all the while smoking up to 20 cigars a day, eating multiple porterhouse steaks for dinner and a pint of whisky every morning, after staying out all night carousing.

Yeah, methinks a lot of people don't really grasp Ruth or Ruthian.

[Skipscards]

It’s pretty simple, the Babe Ruth of baseball is, Babe Ruth.

[rnocards]

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