Shohei Ohtani, you're still no Babe Ruth

I had intended a longer post about how special Shohei Ohtani's 2021 season was compared to some past breakouts.

But, that's been delayed two weeks for a special shorter post.

(Update, Oct. 29: Looking ONLY at batters, and narrowed down to the "modern" era [I went with end of WWII, not post-Jackie Robinson, and netted one more player that way] I found six players who had seasons more than 20 percent better than Ohtani's and three more who had seasons at least 15 percent better. Several did it twice.)

This is an updated post of one I did about this subject from the start of last month, and it's being done for several reasons.

First, now that we're at the end of a season, we can further peruse this debate, especially with debate gearing up for the playoffs and Shohei Ohtani lamenting that the Angels aren't there and broadly hinting they need to do more, though he later said he's perfectly open to signing a new contract with them.

Three years ago David Schoenfield tried to claim that Mike Trout was on track for the best season ever. He was wrong and I thoroughly explained why.

But, Schoenfield has moved on. Now he's hinted that Ohtani might be among the best, and, once again, from what I can see before I hit the ESPN+ paywall he ignores Walter Johnson's GOAT 1913 season. (To be half fair, in 2018, it wasn't just Schoenfield; it was a whole set of ESPN clusterfuckheads.)

So, no, Schoenfield Ohtani's year, while it could have been in the 10-WAR range if he finished out strong, is NOT Babe Ruth . Or Barry Bonds. Or Mike Trout. (Update: Just looking post-2000, he's also not a Zack Greinke or Randy Johnson.)

And certainly not Walter Johnson.

Also, as for the two-way claims? Well, not totally so fast. In his peak, Johnson appeared as a batter in 55 or so games for several years straight. (That said, most those years, he pitched 48 or more games.) Twice he was over games. In 1914, one year after his peak, he had 160 PAs. In 1918, 167. Rounding up a 0.9 year, he had seven straight years of 1.0 or more WAR at the plate. (Johnson also in 1913 tied his career best in batting with a 109 OPS+. You can see more about Big Train at my post linked up top.

I now see that some dood from Yahoo Sports, Jack Baer, via MSN, has doubled down on Schoenfield's nuttery on Ohtani vs Ruth, and that's what led me do to a separate breakout just on this. And, he's wrong. Ruth tossed 133 innings in 1919 and well enough to have 9.9 combined WAR. Ruth, also being reasonably two-way in 1918, tallied a flat 7 WAR in a season that, for the BoSox in specific, was just 126 games due to WWI. Add 25 percent to 7 WAR, and we're at 8.8, right next to Ohtani's 9.0; Ruth had 382 ABs and 166 IPs in that shortened season. He had 133 IPs in 1919; both cases are higher than Ohtani's.

Bob Gibson, while no Walter Johnson, had a career batting WAR of 7.0. Four times he had a season batting WAR of 0.7 or higher; five times he had 100 or more ABs, not plate appearances.

Ruth also leads me back to one point already discussed in my previous blog post about Ohtani, first raised by commenter David in Minnesota, and a second point I'll discuss further in upcoming posts about Ohtani's season.

The already raised point? Ruth was playing left field (sic, not right, which he did with the Yankees) when not pitching, and not designated hitter, because such a thing didn't exist. Obviously, he was making extra throws with his arm, but he was also putting more stress on his legs. Ruth wasn't the getting-tubby guy of a decade ago, but, it's just that the extra work on his legs, which are key to good pitching, might have been tiring them out more.

The arm? In 1918, Ruth had 121 putouts in the OF (plus a few more at first base). He had 222 in 1919. So, he had that many outfield throws, minimum, plus between-inning warmup tosses.

Now, moving back to Ohtani? His mound/bat WAR split is more even than Ruth's was, and of course, far more than Johnson's. But, the DH-ing is itself some sort of asterisk.

The upcoming point to get discussed more? Ruth did this two years. Call me back in a year from now on Ohtani. 

Update, Nov. 18: That's true even with him winning the MVP. As Red Satan's story notes, nothing in 2020 indicated something like this would happen. Call me back in 9 months, midseason 2022 or so. Until then, let's not be Liberty Valance and printing the legends.

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One more point on Johnson, and the ESPNers saying in the dead ball and semi-live ball eras, WAR favored pitchers more? He had a career 76 OPS+ at the plate. You'd take that out of a plus-fielding shortstop today. (And, going by games played as a pitcher and as a batter, at his peak, he pinch hit in 7-12 games a year.)

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And, expanding on something I said in comment to Uber? In both 1918 and 1919, Ruth's WAA as a pitcher wasn't very good. But, his batting WAA relative to his WAR was better than Ohtani's. (For batting appearances AS a pitcher, B-Ref normally sets WAA equal to WAR, which complicates things a bit.

Another way to look at this is WAA won-lost percentage, near the right-hand edge of B-Ref's info. In 1980, Ruth was a touch lower than Ohtani's short 2018 and a fair amount lower than this year on the mound.

As for the population issues? One-third the population going into one-half the teams of today, or just over one-quarter of the population, if we note the exclusion of Black players, going into one-half the teams, would seem to argue for somewhat lessened competition. But, as I noted, the flip side is that the NFL didn't exist in Ruth and Johnson's early parts of their careers, and the NBA and predecessor BAA didn't exist at all. You wanted to be a pro athlete? It was baseball or nothing. There's other things that could be argued both ways. For example, there was no college baseball, but the minor leagues were more robust and competitive than today. Plus, without guaranteed contracts, if you started slipping, an owner had no compunction about dumping you.