Who is the Best Baseball Player?

Ruth George Herman Jr. was the baseball player who dominated the sport the most. There is a good argument that he dominated his sport in a way that an athlete has never achieved in any other sport. 

Ruth led the hitting parade as the game transitioned from the small-ball era to the home run era; He arrived as the game was changing. But he wasn’t just a machine for home runs. He was a lot, a lot more.

The Bambino’s significance to baseball as a sport cannot be overstated. He was a larger-than-life character with a genuine superstar persona that was especially well-suited for the Roaring Twenties. His global notoriety brought the sport fresh, widespread attention.

But more importantly, he was a pioneer among baseball players in ushering in the Live-Ball Era after the Dead-Ball Era. The decade in which he produced his best work saw changes in pitching and hitting, and his presence forever influenced those changes.

Ruth The Batter.

The number of home runs in a career and the legendary 1927 season with 60 home runs are well-known to everyone. The fact that Ruth led the American League in home runs in 1918 with 11 in just 95 games while playing part-time right field and the part-time pitcher is a little-known fact. Or that he only played in 130 games the following season but still managed to break the 35-year-old record for home runs.

For example, the following season, while playing outfield for the Yankees full-time, he nearly doubled up again and hit an unheard-of 54. Then, with 59, he once again exceeded himself in 1921.

There was no question who the greatest power hitter in history was when he attained the age of 60 in 1927.

But let’s consider that in context. Only 447 home runs were hit in the entire Major Leagues in 1919 when Ruth hit 29 home runs. Ruth’s 29 home runs accounted for 6% of all MLB home runs. In the Major Leagues, 4934 home runs were hit in 2012; the Yankees led all teams with 245 hits, 6% of the total, or 296 home runs.

Jump ahead to 1921, when Ruth once more broke his record for home runs with 59; by that year, Major League players had started hitting those hard, white balls much more frequently than they once hit the soft gray ball of the Dead Ball era, hitting 937 balls that year, more than double the number two years earlier. Even so, Ruth only made up 6% of the total.

Home runs were less common than we frequently assume, even though they became noticeably more frequent during the Live Ball era. In 1921, the Yankees had 134 home runs, the most in the MLB, while no other team reached 90. In 2012, only five teams hit fewer home runs than 134, with the average team hitting 164.

Ruth hit 59 home runs alone in 1921, the league average for teams.

Ruth was so far in front of the pack based on power numbers that there don’t seem to be enough superlatives to describe it adequately.

Ruth The Pure Hitter.

The Bambino, however, offered more than just raw power. He had excellent hitting skills as well.

Ruth has the 10th-best career batting average of all time at .342. He reached the .393 mark eight times, won a batting title in 1924 with a .378 average, and finished second to Harry Heilmann’s .403 in 1923.

Ruth five times led the Majors in strikeouts, but she never struck out more than 100 times in a season in a sport where making a connection and putting the ball in play were still prized abilities. Most contemporary sluggers would prefer to keep their Ks below triple digits.

Ruth The Runner.

People often picture a chubby man subsisting on hot dogs, whiskey, and cigars when they think of the Babe. He did, however, stay in reasonably good shape for most of his career. His playing weight is listed as 215 lbs on Baseball-Reference.com, which is not excessive for a 6’2″ athlete.

He frequently finished in the top three in the league for doubles, eight times took the league’s scoring crown, four times hit at least ten triples in a season, and five times stole at least ten bases in a campaign.

Admittedly, he ran far more often than would be wise. He stole 17 bases in 1923, which was a career-high. Additionally, he was apprehended 21 times that year, which is poor by any standard.

Ruth was thrown out trying to steal second base in Game 7 of the 1926 World Series, giving Rogers Hornsby’s St. Louis Cardinals a victory. His career totals for stolen bases are better than a 50 percent success rate. The winning team was the St. Louis Cardinals.

But ultimately, Ruth is hardly a liability on the base paths. His statistics show a man who had the speed and agility to run and score goals and genuinely enjoyed running.

Ruth the Fielder.

Because some numbers from Ruth’s era still need to be included, it can be challenging to assess a player’s defensive ability, but here is what we know.

Ruth slightly outperformed the league average (dot966) in the outfield with a fielding percentage of .968. With 21 assists in the 1920 season, he consistently placed in the top five in the league thanks to his respectable 11 points 3 assist average. In 1924 and 1928, he twice finished first in the league in Range Factor. His career range factor, which stands at 2.07, is slightly lower than the league average of 2.35.

Ruth has a little less range than some of his contemporaries, but he can play with style and has a great arm. This doesn’t seem out of place, given that he was a pitcher when he first entered the Majors and had to catch up with his outfield abilities. It also follows that he could throw with the best of them since he was once a pitcher.

Ruth The Pitcher.

This is where he separates himself from the competition if the rest of evidence still needs to do so.

Babe Ruth made his MLB debut with the Boston Red Sox as a pitcher. And not just any schlub either.

Babe was a regular in the Red Sox rotation for five years, during which time he won an ERA championship (1.75 in 1916) and made three appearances in the top 10 in both wins and WHIP.

His winning percentage was the 11th-best of all time when his career was over—ninety-four career victories and the 17th-best ERA in history (2.28) out of 671 players.

The postseason saw him perform even better.

He made three starts in two World Series appearances as a pitcher, won each one, and recorded an absurd 0-point 87 ERA. Along the way, he established a World Series record for the longest stretch without allowing a run, pitching 29+7 innings.

Until 1961, when Whitey Ford finally broke it, that record stood for more than 40 years.

We might not have seen Babe Ruth’s offensive potential if the Sox had kept him on the mound, but as a pitcher, he almost certainly would have been a lock for the Hall of Fame and likely would have won more than 300 games.

Babe Ruth altered baseball’s rules.

He hit with an unheard-of level of power that was rare even after he retired. The next player would reach that plateau ten years after Ruth broke the 50-home run barrier, by which time Ruth would have accomplished it three more times.

Before it became commonplace for ten or more players to hit 30 in a season, it took until the 1950s for all of the top 10 Major League home run hitters to reach the 30-homer plateau. In 14 years, Ruth hit 30 or better 13 times.

And he did it all while keeping up a sky-high batting average, drawing more than 100 walks per season, and consistently playing reliable corner outfield defense for the Yankees.

It becomes clear that we’re talking about a different kind of cat when we talk about the Babe when you consider that he was among the top few pitchers at the beginning of his career. The likes of which had never before seen and probably won’t ever be again were this complete ballplayer.

The Sultan of Swat transformed the underachieving New York Yankees into the powerhouse everyone knows and loves to hate, winning four more Series in the process. He had previously assisted the Red Sox in their three World Series victories in four years.

Without a shadow of a doubt, Babe Ruth was the greatest player of all time. Ruth was the man who made it so that baseball offense before him and after him are almost two entirely different games. Ruth George Herman Jr. was the baseball player who dominated the sport the most. There is a good argument that he dominated his sport in a way that an athlete has never achieved in any other sport. 

Ruth led the hitting parade as the game transitioned from the small-ball era to the home run era; He arrived as the game was changing. But he wasn’t just a machine for home runs. He was a lot, a lot more.

The Bambino’s significance to baseball as a sport cannot be overstated. He was a larger-than-life character with a genuine superstar persona that was especially well-suited for the Roaring Twenties. His global notoriety brought the sport fresh, widespread attention.

But more importantly, he was a pioneer among baseball players in ushering in the Live-Ball Era after the Dead-Ball Era. The decade in which he produced his best work saw changes in pitching and hitting, and his presence forever influenced those changes.