How would Babe Ruth do if he were in his prime today?

“teh pen” and thence use him for late inning pinch hits.

Ruth would do in todays game. One argument for him would be that the parks are smaller, and the pitchers aren’t as good (most of the big start pitchers that got awards named after themselves played around Ruth’s day). An argument against Ruth today would be that more pitchers are used, and more pitches are thrown.

The game has changed, it’s impossible to know how Ruth would have hit today. Personally, I think he would have done just fine. But we’ll never know.

Budweiser was probably 55 calories by the sip..let a lone a watered down carbonated urine soft drink.

I think the Babe would be good…I wonder if he faced 95mph fastballs on regular occasion?

I remember Bill James saying about the pre-steroids Barry Bonds, “Ted Williams was never the player this guy is.”

Here’s something you can never correct for. Babe Ruth changed the way the game of Baseball is played—and he was much criticized for it at the time. We the game we watch is a game he helped create through his talent and his, for lack of a better word, cahones.

So the question to ask—and it’s impossible to answer—is how would the Babe change the game if he played today?

By way of comparison, the greatest change I’ve seen in how the game is played is the emergence of the short-short reliever. I think of this as the LaRussa/Eckersly revolution. Every team seems to think that they have to manage as if they have an Eck, even though very few do (just as every manager manages as if they have a Babe and Gehrig, even though they don’t).

As to the quality of pitching being better in Babe’s day: remember, the mounds were higher, and scuffed balls were kept in play. That may have made pitchers harder to hit. Because of the specialization in pitching today, I suspect that talent level is much, much higher. However, the ball parks are smaller.

So: to answer the question, how would Babe do today? He’d be the best lefthanded starting pitcher in the world. Because of the DH, his homerun hitting prowess would be the stuff of spring training anecdotes.

Because of improved conditioning, he’d pitch into his forties. And medical treatment would keep him healthy well after that nasty brush with cancer.

How fast do you think pitchers actually threw 100 years ago? I mean theres no way anyone was throwing 90’s back then. I think he would be average if not worse then that if he played nowadays. Just look at the guy, no way any of the players back then were in the same kind of shape our players are now. I hate when people compare baseball past with todays game.

Like the people above me mentioned, there’s no way you can tell. He might have used the advanced conditioning most players do these days and have even more power. Or maybe Babe Ruth was Babe Ruth because he was the first player to be know as a “power hitter”. There’s no doubt Ruth was great, but you can’t really compare eras, since there’s so many variables going both for and against Ruth today. If I had to take a guess though, I’d say he’d be a league average player, WAR at about 1.5-2.

that it is hard to say how he’d fare today with all the advances in training, etc. But for one to say he’d be “average” is a little much. We CAN compare him to his peers, they had the same “tools” as the Babe and he outdid everybody. He was so far and above any of his peers it was ridiculous. And like I said, they were playing with the same ball on the same fields and against the same pitching as Babe, and yet he was the one to accomplish all that he did. I think he’d be pretty damn good.