The remark of Einstein about Tesla is an urban legend by the way....
The 2 are geniuses, but very different...
An inventor is not a theoretical physicist...
You cannot compare the 2...
But if you compared Steinmetz, one of the greatest engineer and physicist with 200 hundred inventions, with the 278 of Tesla in the electrical field...
We can say that he is NOT a tinkerer BUT a true scientist on the level of Steinmetz at least...
By the way, owning a photographic IMAGINATIVE memory Tesla never draw a blueprint before working on all his machine designs, save for his workers needs...