Babe Ruth
Shohei Ohtani
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Babe Ruth leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Babe Ruth at #1 and Shohei Ohtani at #12.
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The case for Babe Ruth
The gap between Ruth and his contemporaries remains the largest any team-sport athlete has opened. His 182.6 career WAR leads all players, and the shape of it is absurd: before becoming a full-time hitter he went 94-46 as a pitcher with a 2.28 ERA, led the AL with a 1.75 ERA in 1916, and threw nearly 30 consecutive scoreless World Series innings. Then he invented modern offense. His 54 home runs in 1920 exceeded the total of every other American League team; his 60 in 1927 out-homered each AL rival again. His career .342 average, .474 on-base percentage, and 1.164 OPS — still the all-time record — came with a slugging percentage (.690) no qualified career has matched. He faced a segregated talent pool, which the debate must acknowledge, but dominance relative to environment is the fairest cross-era test, and by that test Ruth has no peer.
The case for Shohei Ohtani
The only player on this list still adding to his case, and the only one doing something Ruth abandoned in 1919: genuine two-way play at an MVP level. Through 2025 Ohtani has four MVP awards — every one unanimous — in five seasons, a feat matched by no one; 280 career home runs alongside 38-plus wins and 650-plus strikeouts as a pitcher; and the first 50-50 season in history in 2024, finishing 54 homers and 59 steals and clinching the milestone with a 6-for-6, three-homer game. His 2023 WBC ending — striking out Mike Trout, his Angels teammate, to seal Japan's title — and his 2025 postseason game against Milwaukee, ten strikeouts as the starting pitcher and three home runs as the leadoff hitter in the same night, are already mythology. His 700-million-dollar Dodgers contract reset sports economics. Ranked twelfth on accumulated value; no active player is more likely to climb.