Babe Ruth's Legacy Goes Well Beyond All The Homers He Hit

...But they sure helped quite a bit.

Babe Ruth has a reasonably long list of nicknames on his Baseball-Reference page. Some of them include The Great Bambino, The Sultan of Swat, The Colossus of Clout (my personal favorite), and The King of Crash.

But if I had to add one to this list, it’d be the Godfather of Home Runs. Why? Well, nobody dominated the category like Ruth did during his playing days. And thanks to how the game is built today, it’s likely that nobody ever will again.

Just look at some of the things he did during his Hall of Fame career:

• 11 seasons with 40-plus homers (an MLB record)

• Seven consecutive seasons with at least 40 homers (another MLB record)

• One of five players with at least three seasons of 50-plus homers (he did it four times)

• The only player to hit three homers in a postseason game twice

It’s been 90 years since Ruth last played in a big-league game, yet his 714 homers are still the third most all-time. I could go on for a while, but then I’d get sidetracked from the point of today’s post.

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Babe Ruth’s Overall Offensive Production Is Still Unmatched

When anyone mentions Ruth’s name, the first thing many think about is all the homers he slugged. That makes sense since he dominated the category in a way the game never saw before and will never see again.

But the dude was an outstanding all-around offensive force. While there are plenty of debates about whether or not Ruth would be able to hack it in today’s game, he’s still at the top of impressive leaderboards.

If you look at career WAR for position players on FanGraphs, Ruth’s 167.0 mark is still the best in baseball history (Barry Bonds is second at 164.4). And when we look at the top single-season performances ever, Ruth still finds a way to dominate at the top.

When using fWAR as the barometer, the following seasons from Ruth are the top four most productive in MLB history:

• 1923 (14.7 fWAR): .393/.545/.764 with 41 homers, 131 RBI, 151 runs scored and 17 steals

• 1921 (13.7 fWAR): .378/.512/.846 with 59 homers, 171 RBI, 177 runs scored and 17 steals

• 1920 (13.1 fWAR): .376/.533/.849 with 54 homers, 137 RBI, 158 runs scored and 14 steals

• 1927 (12.9 fWAR): .356/.486/.772 with 60 homers, 164 RBI, 158 runs scored and 7 steals

Ruth is not just the only player in MLB history to post a season worth at least 13 fWAR, but he also did it three times. Because of course he did. Three of these four seasons included at least 54 homers from the Bambino, but I think it’s telling that the “worst” of the group was his record-breaking 60-homer campaign for the New York Yankees in 1927.

So, while he’s probably best known for slugging dingers, he provided much more than that when he stepped into the batter’s box. I mean, the lowest batting average he produced among these occurrences was .356, and he walked more often than he struck out each time.

Players Who Have Come the Closest to Overtaking Ruth

There have been some close calls regarding players trying to unseat Ruth at the top of this specific leaderboard. They’ve just come few and far between.

The man who came the closest (twice) thus far is Barry Bonds. He did it in consecutive years, too. Here are his two most valuable single-season performances:

• 2002 (12.7 fWAR): .370/.582/.799 with 46 homers, 110 RBI, 117 runs scored and 9 steals

• 2001 (12.5 fWAR): .328/.515/.863 with 73 homers, 137 RBI, 129 runs scored and 13 steals

I’ll never get over those on-base percentage numbers. My goodness. Bonds would’ve probably cracked the top four during his 2001-04 run of consecutive MVPs if opposing pitchers didn’t intentionally walk him so much.

We’ve actually had some close-ish calls in recent years thanks to Aaron Judge. But comparing their best seasons with what Ruth did puts into perspective just how hard it’ll be to overtake the Godfather of Home Runs.

Judge has posted two seasons of 11.0-plus fWAR (2022 and 2024). His 2024 campaign was just slightly better at 11.2 fWAR. It finished as the 19th-best offensive season ever after he slashed .322/.458/.701 with 58 homers, 144 RBI, 122 runs scored and 10 steals.

Could Ruth hack it in today’s MLB? Maybe he could, maybe he couldn’t. But his legacy will live on forever, and who knows if anyone will ever have a more valuable season as a position player than him.

Thanks for reading today’s edition of the MLB Daily Dingers newsletter! Come back on Friday to find out what makes Eddie Murray unique among the game’s most elite sluggers.