Is Babe Ruth overrated?

According to ESPN’s Buster Olney, “Babe Ruth. He’s not the greatest ever. Other than Jackie Robinson, he is the most transformative player in baseball history and how we change the sport. But Adam Ottavino is right: he would strike out vintage Babe Ruth repeatedly. The sport evolves.”

While I do agree that Babe Ruth would strike out more often in today’s game, I completely disagree that he would not be able to hit today’s pitchers. In fact, the evidence suggests that he’d still be the greatest hitter of all time. A lot of factors would go into this.

For one thing we do not know specifically how fast pitchers back then were throwing. It seems to be a massive assumption that pitchers back then had no velocity. However, we don’t necessarily know that. Also, the ball was not replaced as often and was therefore much dirtier. This would make it a lot harder to see. And this is without the stuff that the pitchers were allowed to do at that time such as throw spitballs and put stuff on the ball. They are also assuming that these hitters, such as Babe Ruth, could not make adjustments to the new pitches and speed. However, I argue that there was a greater variety of pitches back then, so they would actually have fewer things to watch for now. Ruth would also have better nutrition, easier transportation, air conditioning, and easy to access weight rooms and trainers which he did not have back then.

Another problem with this argument is that we don’t do the opposite with contemporary players. Imagine Mike Trout in the 1920’s having to pick up spitballs and go on 24 hour train rides to the next game. Imagine someone like CC Sabathia pitching in the early 1900s with a bunch of slap hitters and guys who love to bunt. Yeah, that wouldn’t go over too well. Babe Ruth was probably the best power hitter of all time in an era where there were few homers and tougher playing conditions. To assume that he could not make adjustments to a bit more velocity is a little odd. But it seems like a lot of people have this opinion. Is it just contemporary bias? I am not sure of that answer, but I am pretty certain that Babe Ruth is still the greatest baseball player of all time.