Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani: A 21st century rendition of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig

The Los Angeles Angels have two once in a lifetime talents in Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. One has not even stepped foot on an MLB diamond.

Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani have the potential to be something extremely special together. So special, that they could stack up against arguably the greatest duo in MLB history; Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

Bear with me.

First, there is Mike Trout. The product of Millville, New Jersey that has revolutionized the game of baseball. Trout is the perfect figurehead for the advanced sabermetric movement. He has been so good that he is comparable to the best MLB players of all-time. At his current pace, he may challenge to go down as the greatest of all-time.

In his first five seasons — according to FanGraphs — Trout led all of baseball with a 46.8 WAR. Trout already has more WAR than some Hall of Famers (Vladimir Guerrero) as well as one of the most dominant stretches in baseball history.

In that five-year stretch (which excludes his injury-shortened 2017) Trout hit .310 with 163 home runs, 481 RBIs, 580 runs and 468 walks in 771 games played. He is still only 26 years old.

At his current pace, if he plays throughout his age 41 season and averages 150 games played each year (he turns 41 in August of 2032) Trout will have a 186.7 WAR. The best all-time is Barry Bonds with 168.4 WAR.

Will Trout keep up that pace? No. However, his numbers are already Hall of Fame worthy. Even better, he compares pretty nicely to an MLB legend.

Lou Gehrig played 23 combined games in 1923 and 1924 with the New York Yankees. His first significant year was 1925 in which he played in 126 of the 154 games. However, for argument’s sake, we are going to look at his first five full years, similar to Trout, from 1926 to 1930.

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The similarities are shocking.

In that five-year stretch, Gehrig hit .348 with 166 home runs, 729 RBIs, 693 runs and 532 walks in 772 games played. Obviously, the stats are more inflated, but this is coming in a time when the batting averages are significantly higher.

In 1930 the average batting average in the American League was .288, putting Gehrig 60 points above the average. In 2016, the average batting average of the American League was .257, putting Trout 53 points above the average.

Gehrig accounted for 23.5% of his team’s home runs in that stretch, 16.8% of RBIs and 14.8% of runs. Trout accounted for 19.5% of his team’s home runs in that stretch, 13.9% of RBIs and 15.9% of runs.

It should be noted, Trout played in 95.2% of the Angels games, Gehrig played in 100%. If Mike Trout played 100% of his games, at the same pace, he would have 20.4% of home runs, 14.6% of RBIs and 16.7% of runs.

Even better, and a lot less math, Gehrig’s WAR from 1926 to 1930 was 46.1. Mike Trout has him beat, and aside from missing time due to injury, is very well this generation’s Lou Gehrig.

Behind him hopes to be this generation’s Shohei Ohtani. This comparison is more far-fetched simply because we have no idea how he is going to produce in the MLB.

However, if you know anything Shohei Ohtani, he has been touted as the Japanese Babe Ruth; someone that not can slug bombs out of the park, but can pitch at an elite level. Although Ruth eventually dropped the pitching out of his repertoire, he is the MLB’s only example of someone who was elite at both.

Don’t get me wrong, Ohtani will be nowhere close as dominant as Ruth was in his hay day. Ruth is the MLB’s version of Wilt Chamberlain. He was so far ahead of his time in an era that was unfamiliar to the home run at such a high-level. Would he succeed by today’s terms? Probably, but he wouldn’t close as dominant.

However, Ohtani can match Ruth in terms of pitching quality. The batters Ruth faced in his time were far less talented than those that Ohtani will face, thus, the numbers may be skewed in Ruth’s favor.

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Yet still, Shohei Ohtani has everything it takes to be an elite pitcher at the MLB level. He could crash and burn, nobody really knows what to expect. Although, all the cards are in his favor to become the 21st century Babe Ruth. A pioneer ahead of his time.