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Bonds / Ruth Analysis
P. Adel, November 2004
Link to
Accompanying Chart
This is the first attempt at a direct player to player comparison using an Offense Ratio Chart to illustrate the hypothesis. This came about from a discussion at the BaseballBoards.com forum, in a thread titled 'Has Bonds Surpassed Ruth', a natural topic for a food fight, made more controversial by comparing players from different eras.
First the house rules. This is not an attempt to compare the complete careers of these two great players, or to assess their relative overall 'value' based on every aspect of the game (hitting, running, defense, leadership, ballpark factor adjustment, etc.). In the thread I asserted that Bonds has separated himself further from his peers than Ruth did. This proposition was with respect to Bonds' recent productivity at the plate. This is a comparison between Bond's best years and Ruth's best years, relative to the rest of the major leagues of the respective periods. Ruth's full career numbers still stand alone in the history of baseball.
Secondly, the possible influence of chemical enhancements is not the topic of this analysis. This is a strictly numerical comparison, without respect to morals and fair play. The purpose is to take advantage of the graphical nature of the Offense Ratio to illustrate the ordinarily subjective comparison of the offensive production of ball players from different eras.
The comparison uses the average OR (bases per out) for the selected years for each player, and the corresponding average OR of the combined National and American Leagues during the respective intervals: 2001 thru 2004 seasons for Bonds, 1920 thru 1928 for Ruth. To make the analysis more conservative, Ruth's average OR over this period excludes 1922, '25, and '28, because they were "sub-par", in a strictly super-human sense of the term "sub-par".
The comparison is presented on the Bonds Ruth Comparison Offense Ratio Chart. The player and Major League averages over the respective intervals are highlighted.
In 1920, Ruth separated himself from the crowd, and turned baseball on it's head. Prior to 1920, his top season numbers were a .325 average in 1917, and 29 home runs in 1919. The following year he went to an unprecedented 54 home runs, and hit .355 over the next 10 years with a high of .393 in 1923. His power game pioneered the direction that baseball has taken since then. Since 1920, batting averages have steadily dropped, strikeout numbers have steadily increased, and nobody chokes up on the bat anymore. Bonds is expanding the envelope in the same direction, representing the current apex of the trend that became overwhelmingly apparent with the Sosa-McGwire homerun derbies of the late 90's.
The difference in the 'nature of the game" between Ruth's heyday and Bond's is immediately apparent in the lower left corner of the chart: the overall higher batting averages and lower power numbers of the roaring twenties compared to the free-swinging-generated offense of the modern game.
The actual runs per game in both periods are very close to 5 runs per team per game (4.73 from 2001 to 2004, 4.79 from 1920 to 1928). The Offense Ratio (bases per out) of the last four years is higher than it was in Ruth's day (.706 vs. .673 bases per out), but the runs per game predicted by the OR / RPG correlation end up being very close, 4.80 for the past four years based on the 1950 - 1997 correlation, 4.83 for the Ruth's nine year period based on the 1920 - 1939 correlation.
The distance between the player's average OR and the average OR for the majors, indicated by the arrows on the chart, represents the greater potential run production of the individual player compared to their respective peer groups. Even though the major league OR for the modern period is higher than for the 20's, the distance is still greater between Bonds and his peers than between Ruth and his peers. Expressed numerically, Bonds produced 1.24 more bases per out than the rest of the pros over the last four years, while Ruth produced 1.04 more bases per out more than the pros during his six best years. While only 0.2 bases per out separates Bonds' superiority over his peers from Ruth's, when looking at teams, 0.2 bases per out translates to the equivalent of a slightly more than a full run per game (11.3 runs per game vs. 10.1).
The chart illustrates the hypothesis and the conclusion far better than words can. In the past four years, Bonds has separated himself further from his peers than Ruth did during his six best years.
Offense Ratio (bases per out) is a fundamental (un-factored and non-subjective) statistic of baseball. It’s as basic as batting average and more simplistic than earned run average. It has the unique advantage of being a function of two favored but contrary baseball measurements: batting average and power. This makes it possible to separate and equate average and power on one scale, and illustrate the relative value of each on one diagram.