Is Shohei Ohtani already better than Babe Ruth?

Hey dum dum, nobody is saying that Ohtani has HOF numbers. It is so tedious to have to qualify any commentary on the BEST baseball player in the world with the fact that they have to keep playing long enough to get in the HOF. That's obvious, we know its obvious.

This thread is two years of people rightly being amazed at a guy who can throw 100 mph, hit a ball 500 feet, run really fast, and do it all with skill. And throughout it all, flagpole says meh look at his pitcher wins and batting average, he'll decline, Todd Van Poppel and Dale Murphy. So no, flagpole is not right, which is why this is up to eight pages of people dunking on him.

Will Ohtani make the HOF? Yeah, if he keeps playing like this. Can he do that? I don't know, but that doofus sure doesn't know, and if you would have asked anyone ten years ago if a guy could do what Ohtani is doing now they would have said no way.

Thanks, Genius. On the previous page, someone wrote: Imagine if he doesn't end up in the HOF, they may as well shut it down.

Babe Ruth, like Jordan, Tiger, Bolt have transcended their own sport.

Ohtani will do the same, word hasn't spread to the non baseball world yet.

We are witnessing greatness, I hope it lasts for years, but if it doesn't, I'll still enjoy every moment.

Ohtani gets my vote for best all time. Even if he quit tomorrow he is a HOF lock. Remember Yao Ming? He got into the BB HOF with a short career and nothing accomplished post season as a tourist attraction for Chinese tourists.

But really, Ohtani is pretty remarkable.

How did you make the leap in your mind from "remarkable" to "best of all time"?

Yes, he's vey good. But at the moment he's not anywhere close to the best of all time.

Nomo and Cecil Fielder? Now that’s funny.

There’s no shame in those comparisons. Look at their stats. Fielder hit a combined 95 homers in 1990 and 1991, finishing as the AL MVP runner-up both years. Nomo finished 4th in the NL Cy Young voting in 1995 and 1996. Like Ohtani, those big breakout years for Fielder and Nomo came in their ages 26 and 27 seasons.

Fielder and Nomo tailed off starting with their age 28 seasons whereas Ohtani is (so far) having a monster year at age 28. We’ll see what happens in the future.

Part of the greatness of Babe Ruth was that he put the pitching aspect of his career behind him. He pursued two things only: Winning pennants and hitting homeruns -- in order to help his team. Ohtani refuses to put the pitching behind him. He's sort of shouting "I can pitch too!" Selfish. Where's the pennants? Not gonna be found in Anaheim.

Your comments about Ohtani are nuts. He’s on a 12 WAR pace which would be the highest single season total in close to 60 years.

Ohtani has already put up 30 WAR in 6 years (but really 4).

Cecil Fielder put up 17 WAR over 13 years, Nomo 20 WAR over 12. In 200 some odd games, Ohtani will likely already have more contributions than Fielder and Nomo combined, and in half the time.

Also, gotta laugh at people talking about batting average. You're a little over a quarter century behind on how players are evaluated and paid.

BRef's Similarity Scores are crude comparisons based on the positions they play. Ohtani's two-way play means that he is limited to DH as a precaution, not because of ability. Dinging him value because of the positional adjustment is fine, but expecting him to age similarly to Cecil Fielder just because they both DH'd a lot is silly. Fielder was a big fat guy while Ohtani is one of the best athletes in MLB. Put him with OFs and he is amid guys like Larry Walker, Reggie Jackson, Bobby Abreu, and Darryl Strawberry—some HOFs, some not.

He's also without precedent as a two-way player and therefore harder to compare and predict. Expecting him to age like similar hitters at the same time that he ages like comparable pitchers is a fool's errand. It's probably more likely that he'll decline on one end and then become a SP/pinch-hitter or OF-DH/RP in which case he may see a benefit from focusing more on offense or defense.

I didn’t write anything about Ohtani’s or Fielder’s batting averages. If you want to critique my posts, be my guest, but stick to what I actually wrote.

Fielder’s offensive WAR through his age 27 season was 11.0. Ohtani’s was 13.4.

Nomo’s pitching WAR through his age 27 season was 9.4. Ohtani’s was 11.2.

Are they identical matches? No, of course not. But they are pretty similar for what they did through their age 27 seasons. Nomo is certainly a better pitching comparison through age 27 than Maddux (cited by SDSU Aztec), who already had 32.2 pitching WAR at that point in his career.

If Harold Baines is in the Hall, I'd vote Ohtani in after 1-2 more good years. Longevity is given far too much importance.

I never dinged Ohtani for what he might or might not do in the future, and I never predicted that he will age like Fielder or Ohtani. The purpose of the Fielder-Nomo comparisons was to show the players he’s most *statistically* (not physically) similar to through age 27; I didn’t mean to imply that he will end up like them. I already distinguished his current season from their age 28 seasons, and I wrote “We’ll see what happens in the future.”

I agree that it’s difficult to forecast his future because he’s so unique. One thing we can look at, as I noted on the previous page, is his injury history. That is a risk moving forward.

OMG it's the Hollywood trolls pumping Ohtani again. Ban this thread!

Lol Fielder is not the most statistically similar hitter though! Your criteria is BRef's similarity scores, which are dumb. They exclude all hitters that don't play his position, just 1B/DHs. There are few career DHs historically, especially ones that are DHs as young as Ohtani. Narrowing his cohort that much leaves you with an awful analysis, comparing him to Cecil Fielder and Erubiel Durazo. There are much better ways to compare Ohtani as a hitter with a simple leaderboard search.

You mentioned OPS before, so let's go with that (even though it doesn't adjust for era or park effects). And we'll narrow it to post-integration, 1947, to modernize and make the stats more comparable. Ohtani's career OPS to now is .908—excluding his 1 for 3 with a HR and two walks today. .908 is tied for 39th with Bryce Harper, 38th place is Dick Allen with .912. Just behind Ohtani is a three-way tie between Mike Schmidt, Ken Griffey Jr., and Gary Sheffield with .907.

But that's not totally fair because those players had their numbers decline as they aged. So Ohtani's mark is for ages 23-28. All players aged 23-28 he's tied with Mookie Betts for 53rd best, just behind Ernie Banks and just ahead of George Brett. And for fun, since 2021 his OPS is .946 tied with Freddie Freeman for 41st for ages 26-28. Tied for 39th are Ryan Braun and Bobby Abreu, 43rd is Frank Robinson.

Those numbers as a hitter are in addition to having a 2.97 ERA since he debuted, tied for 9th lowest with Gerrit Cole.

Here's another way to look at it,

Fangraphs post-integration WAR age 26-28 seasons rankings:

1. Barry Bonds 27.8

2. Fergie Jenkins 27.3

3. Pedro Martinez 26.7

4. Alex Rodriguez 25.8

5. Willie Mays 25.6

14. Shohei Ohtani 23.2 with half a season to go

He had a non-zero shot of getting both triple crowns (ERA is too high now). His season has been the most dominant we've ever seen

bump after doubleheader complete game shutout (1 hitter) and 2 homerun day against the tigers