Quote:
Originally Posted by David Sklansky
Especially in baseball, even if you go much further back. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson could all probably start for a major league team. Many from the 60's could. And most, I believe, could easily make a minor league team.
david, the average speed of the a major league fastball has increased by 5 mph since 2002
we can't reliably measure it before then because it wasn't recorded
early estimates are terrible, they'd do things like have a guy ride a motorcycle while the pitcher threw the ball and they'd try to time it etc but it obviously has a lot of room for error and is a pretty imprecise measure anyway
and... that was a one off pitch, not the average going over the course of not just an entire game but a whole season
later stuff, even with radar guns of the 80s and later were not done in a standardized format (how you use the gun will dramatically impact the reading - 3 people pointing a radar gun at the same pitch can get 3 different readings all 30 mph apart from each other) nor done consistently nor even recorded - we just don't have good data on pitch speed and movement until the modern era
guys like those you mentioned were facing semi pro opponents who sold cars in the offseason to get by
babe ruth and ty cobb were regularly getting at bats from gassed starters who'd pitch the entire game because that was considered the norm - now we know better and have the analytics to prove just how quickly starters lose effectiveness
if you look by innings pitched leaders, nobody from the modern era is in the top ten and it's unlikely they ever will - all this despite that they went from 154 games to 162 in 1961 so anyone playing before then should in theory have no chance at those kind of records but there they are because we didn't understand fatigue back then (not to mention had a shallower player pool to the point we didn't trust a fresh reliever vs keeping in our gassed starter)
your example of walter johnson, he threw to contact, he only struck out about 5 guys per 9 innings, something which would easily be the worst in the MLB today - if he stepped out there throwing what were likely mid 80s pitches against guys used to seeing the same stuff but 25% faster, he would get absolutely smoked
likewise your other examples of babe ruth and ty cobb were facing guys who threw to contact, probably threw an upper 80s fastball (pure speculation but there's no way it was faster than now) and were gassed
mind you, most of these guys weren't training in the offseason but selling cars, they also didn't come up through the minor leagues and development academies or college
walter johnson - played in highschool, moved to Idaho afterwoods to work for a telephone company and was noticed by a scout while playing for his company's team - this is the modern equivalent of the Yankees sending scouts to central park softball games to find their next right fielder
babe ruth was a good high school pitcher in baltimore, and on weekends would join up in local league where he did well, the Baltimore orioles, then a minor league team, signed him and would have held onto him if not for the fact they only sold about 150 tickets a game and knew they could make a small fortune selling him to major league team, which they did
ty cobb was a struggling semi pro baseball player making $50 a month and batting .237 - however, he continually wrote letters to a well known sports journalist about how there was this new hot talent named cobb, the journalist eventually published a blurb saying "young fellow named CObb seems to be showing an unusual lot of talent" and that alone get the Tigers attention and they paid a few hundred bucks to purchase his rights from his team - he obviously eventually got there despite that he largely got there by conning a team, but he struggled immensely his first season before finally breaking out as a regular his 2nd year and a star his third
my point is that these guys were not the products of a lifetime of dedication the way the players today are, I'm sure if kyleb were still posting here he'd agree heartily
that is not to say that cobb, johnson, or ruth were to be born today and then had access to modern training and equipment they wouldn't excel in this era as well
but pop those three in their primes in a time machine and pop them out without any changes and they will all fail to make a major league roster