Barry Bonds has more homeruns and Ty Cobb has more hits, but neither of those players had multiple 20 win seasons as a pitcher.
Barry Bonds
Bonds’ 762 homeruns are the most in MLB history. His 2,558 walks are the most in history. His seven MVP awards are four more than any other player, and he is the only member of the 500 homerun-500 stolen base club (only five other players have even earned membership into the 300-300 club).
Baseball writers and fans often dispute his accomplishments because of the steroid controversy, but Bonds had three MVPs before anyone suggests he began using performance enhancing drugs.
Barry Bonds dominated hitting during his era like no one since Babe Ruth himself, but Bonds never took the mound and pitched.
Ty Cobb
Cobb retired with the career runs record, hits record, stolen base record and batting average record (his .367 career mark is still the best ever).
In 1920, Babe Ruth began to hit an unprecedented amount of homeruns per season and evolve baseball from the dead-ball era to the live-ball era. This change in the style of the game disgusted Cobb and caused him to hate Ruth.
On May 5, 1925 Cobb told a reporter in the dugout that he was going to swing for the fences. This would prove he could hit homeruns even better than the Great Bambino, but he chose not to because that was not how baseball was supposed to be played.
Cobb went 6-6 in that game with three homeruns. He hit two more homers in his next game to prove it was no fluke, and then he went back to playing his style of baseball.
Ruth shrugged off Cobb’s impressive feat.
"I could have had a lifetime .600 average, but I would have had to hit them singles. The people were paying to see me hit home runs," Ruth responded.
Ruth also could have said, “But, I struck him out to win a game once…Cobb can’t say that about me.”
Cy Young
Cy Young has the most prolific numbers compared to others in his stat categories than anyone in any sport in any era.
Here are his stats in relation to the next highest ranked player and Roger Clemens, who is considered one of the greatest pitchers of this generation: career wins; Cy Young 511, next highest 417, Clemens 341; career innings pitched: Cy Young 7354.2, next highest 6003.1, Clemens 4704.1; career complete games: Cy Young 749, next highest 606, Clemens 118.
No one comes close to Cy Young’s career numbers in these categories, and he makes arguably the best pitcher of this generation look like a fifth starter.
Sports buffs can rave about Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak all they want, but at least players have made a run at that feat. Young’s records have stood for almost 100 years, and no one has or ever will come close to breaking them.
That being said, Cy Young never hit a homer.
Babe Ruth
Everyone knows Ruth’s offensive prowess. What they do not seem to take into account when considering who the greatest baseball player is of all-time are his pre-Yankee years as a pitcher with the Boston Red Sox.
Ruth had multiple 20 win seasons, multiple 300 inning seasons and, in 1916, he had 170 strikeouts, an eye-popping 1.75 ERA and a brain-bursting 1.08 WHIP—CC Sabathia never did that!
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