The walks were part of his strengths in a strange way as well as his weakness - that he didn't have control of the strike zone, and MIGHT have been the fastest pitcher ever at least up to that time, meant the batter had other things on his mind than hitting a 100 mile an hour fastball.

actually, I did have the wrong idea about Ryan. He was worse than I thought. 27 year career, only 2 20 win seasons, and 2 19 win seasons. Never better that 6 games over .500, 22-16, and 16-10. His last 300 inning season was 1974. His OAV was always good, and he never gave up too many HRs, but he never had an exceptional winning pct. BR puts him between Feller and Gaylord Perry, I'd rate Ryan about even with Perry, and consider them both ranked way too high.

Posted by pfattkatt on 8/12/2012 8:36:00 PM (view original):
actually, I did have the wrong idea about Ryan. He was worse than I thought. 27 year career, only 2 20 win seasons, and 2 19 win seasons. Never better that 6 games over .500, 22-16, and 16-10. His last 300 inning season was 1974. His OAV was always good, and he never gave up too many HRs, but he never had an exceptional winning pct. BR puts him between Feller and Gaylord Perry, I'd rate Ryan about even with Perry, and consider them both ranked way too high.

In 1987 (at the age of 40) Ryan led the NL in ERA and K, but went 8-16 because of the low scoring Houston offense (11th out of 12 teams in the NL).  W-L records for a pitcher can be misleading.

agreed, ncmusician, but he was always around .500, and had a lot of losing seasons. A "K" is just an out, nothing more, Mel Stottlemyer Sr was every bit as effective as Ryan, and no one is calling him an all time great. Ryan had nine seasons with losing records, and almost every other season he was a game or 2 over .500. It can't be poor offense every year.

During Ryan's carrer, he was 32 games over .500; for a 27-year career, that's not a lot.  However, the teams on which he played were only 17 games over .500 - or 15 games UNDER .500 without him.  Sixteen times his winning percentage was better than his team's; of the eleven times it wasn't, four were seasons he didn't start as many as 20 games (his first four years with the Mets, and his final year with the Rangers) - that also includes the aforementioned 1987, when hed led the NL in ERA, K, and OAV but went 8-16 on an abysmal Houston team.  Only three times in his career did he play on a team that won 90 or more games; only three times in his prime (age 25-35, arbitrary but defensible) did his team finish over.500.  What he did was pretty freakin' amazing given the teams he played for - oh, and there's that little thing about the 7 no-hitters, 12 one-hitters, and 18 two-hitters ...

I am in the final draft stages of a 1970 progressive in which Ryan was the first selection in our draft. I will be curious to see how he does in this league. The argument goes on forever about how good he was or wasn't. There are many, many examples of pitchers having astounding W-L records on abysmal teams. Ryan never had an eye popping W-L record on any team. On his best days he was unhittable, no question about that. I absolutely wish the Mets never traded him ( or Singleton, or Otis...), but truly dominant pitchers win many more games than they lose. That was even more true in Ryan's era, because they finished a lot more games. I know I can't convince those who disagree, and you can't convince me, so I am done with this discussion. Ryan, to me, is a baseball version of basketball's Bernard King. He had certain abilities, but he never put it all together and became what he could have been.

Here's a writer who took a close look Ryan's 1987 season. I'm not sure how anyone can fault Ryan for not "finding a way to win" that season.

charlesapril.com/2009/08/closer-look-nolan-ryans-perplexing-1987.html

Posted by pfattkatt on 8/14/2012 10:38:00 AM (view original):
I am in the final draft stages of a 1970 progressive in which Ryan was the first selection in our draft. I will be curious to see how he does in this league. The argument goes on forever about how good he was or wasn't. There are many, many examples of pitchers having astounding W-L records on abysmal teams. Ryan never had an eye popping W-L record on any team. On his best days he was unhittable, no question about that. I absolutely wish the Mets never traded him ( or Singleton, or Otis...), but truly dominant pitchers win many more games than they lose. That was even more true in Ryan's era, because they finished a lot more games. I know I can't convince those who disagree, and you can't convince me, so I am done with this discussion. Ryan, to me, is a baseball version of basketball's Bernard King. He had certain abilities, but he never put it all together and became what he could have been.

Many, many examples?  1972 Steve Carlton is the only one that immediately comes to mind.  Comparing Nolan Ryan to Bernard King (a high volume scorer who got injured) is silly.

During Ryan's career, a pitcher on a losing team won 15+ games 185 times - fifteen wins isn't 'astounding' by anyone's definition, but it's a start.  Ryan did it six of those times, including going 22-16 for the 1974 Angels, who only won 68 games.

Also, during his career (actually, since 1965 up through today) only four times has a pitcher won 23+ games on a losing team (more than Ryan's 22 in '74): 1970 Bob Gibson, 1972 Gaylord Perry, 1972 Steve Carlton, and 1973 Wilbur Wood.

I think Ryan is almost universally mis-valued.  Either people think he's a top-5 all time elite talent or they think he was barely above average, depending on which stats they choose to look at.  Obviously that makes me, the lunatic in the middle ground, right.  I would say the following pitchers have been better than Ryan (in no particular order but the order in which I think of them, which is somewhat chronological and somewhat order of talent, but I don't think I'll miss anyone):

Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Mordecai Brown, Pete Alexander, Lefty Grove, Bob Feller, Warren Spahn, Tom Seaver, Jim Palmer, Greg Maddux, Sandy Koufax, Randy Johnson, Bob Feller, Bob Gibson

That would put Ryan at 15th, which is pretty darn good.  Then, just so nobody accuses me of missing any of these guys, here is the group that would immediately follow Ryan:

Ed Walsh, Eddie Cicotte, Cy Young, Don Sutton, Pedro Martinez, Mariano Rivera, Dennis Eckersley, Steve Carlton, Addie Joss, Old Hoss Radbourn

Any questions?

I don't think I would take Ryan career-wise over any of the guys you name as coming after him, unless of course we are ruling out relief pitchers because for a particular team you need only a SP, or else if we are discussing best starting pitchers. Otherwise, Ryan over Cy Young seems a cruel joke. 

He was absolutely unhittable on the days he was absolutely unhittable. That is true. The pitcher most like him of course is Randy Johnson. Then maybe Feller. A detailed comparison of those three would be a more constructive start I think. 

To me, Ryan's greatest value is his longevity. Many pitchers had a better 5 or 10 year span, but to have an all-star caliber pitcher for 2 1/2 decades...that's what puts him in the top echelon.

Still, Cy Young? A few less seasons, but 76 career shutouts? 1.5 BB/9 for his career? I'm a big Ryan fan, but I take Cy Young there.

Cy Young led his league in ERA twice and strikeouts twice.  Ryan, in a much larger league (which actually still represented a smaller percentage of the total population, so I don't want to hear any BS "watering down talent" arguments which totally ignore the US and world population explosion since the early 20th century), led in ERA twice as well and in strikeouts 11 times.  If he was only unhittable on the days he was unhittable there must have been a hell of a lot of those days, 'cause he led the league in H/9 allowed 12 times and is the all-time career leader in that department.  His 6.555 H/9 blows away every comparable pitcher, really.  The next closest pitchers who pitched even half as many innings as Ryan are Sudden Sam McDowell at 7.034 and Pedro at 7.070, and both of those guys pitched just barely over 50% of Ryan's inning total and retired much younger.

If you want to make a detailed comparison of three pitchers you see as similar, go for it.  As I said, I know nobody is going to agree with me, because everybody else seems to think Ryan is either much better or much worse than I think, but I can easily cherry-pick statistics to combat either of those arguments, which really brings me back to the middle where I am now...  FWIW, Baseball-Reference thinks the most similar pitcher to Ryan is Steve Carlton.  Not sure how I feel about that, I think the Johnson comparison is actually better, but it probably has to do with each of them being up-and-down until a string of dominance in their late 30s (Carlton)/early 40s (Ryan).