When Adam Ottavino recently boasted he would strike out Babe Ruth, it reignited one of baseball’s favorite debates: how would modern players fare against the stars of yesteryear? The debate typically boils down to a few things - the impact of integration, the improvement of training methods, and the shifting ways that players are used. All of those factors have diversified and improved the talent pool for MLB teams to a point where players are faster, stronger, better informed, and throw with greater velocity than ever before. According to Baseball Savant and Statcast, the average fastball (4-seam, 2-seam, sinker, and cutter) in 2018 was 92.
Let’s take a moment for the magical, soft-tossing, cutter-loving 2018 Mariners pitching staff
