Pinpoint control, strikeouts, monster win count, mostly losing teams... It just makes your jaw drop thinking about Walter Johnson, doesn't it?!?! I refuse to call him WaJo. He gets the full name treatment! He's not J. Lo.

And on top of his accomplishments, a wonderful human being.

For consideration...

Vulpinnacle
The most perfect looking Nellie Fox or Jimmie Foxx card a collector could hope to find.

It's gonna be REAL tough for you to match the genius of Lance ARF-strong.

Good list directly above. You did accidentally left off Ray Schalk, which was your 'newly added' list.

If you allow Hall of Famers who also appeared in the other two large scale tobacco issues of the era (T205 and T207) and 1930's issues up through the 1934 issues of 1934 Goudey, 1934-36 Diamond Stars and 1934-36 Batter-Up, the following would be eliminated from the list:

Alexander - 1931 W517
Appling - 1933 W574, 1934 Goudey, 1934-36 Diamond Stars, 1934-36 Batter-Up
Carey - 1912 T207
Hafey - 1931 W517, 1933 Delong, 1933 Tattoo Orbit, 1934 Goudey, 1934-36 Diamond Stars, 1934-36 Batter-Up
Harris - 1931 W517, 1934-36 Diamond Stars
Heilmann - 1931 W517
Hooper - 1912 T207 (and 1909-11 E254 Colgan's Chips)
Kelly - 1931 W517
Lombardi - 1933 Tattoo Orbit, 1934 Goudey, 1934-36 Diamond Stars, 1934-36 Batter-Up
Lopez - 1934-36 Diamond Stars, 1934-36 Batter-Up
Roush - 1931 W517

Leaving just these HOF players without cards from the 1909-1912 and/or 1930-34 eras:

Bancroft
Coveleski
Schalk
Sisler
Youngs


Brian

agree with it all
 

Johnson pretty much embarrasses every other pitcher who ever lived.

I think you've found the one statement that won't start an argument around here.

I'm just so thankful that I had friends who played with and against him so I could hear first-hand accounts. The man was universally loved.

sorry, but that just looks at his best seasons
 

Ryan's only two 20-win seasons (which was another thing I was going to bring up). Feller won 20 six times and lost four more probables to the war (1942-45).

I know NR pitched for a lot of so-so teams, but pointing to pitcher win totals relative to bad team records only takes you so far - Feller somehow won 26 in 1946 for a Cleveland team that won 68 total games.

Look at Walter Johnson with his .599 lifetime for a lot of really so-so teams.... he pitched about the same number of innings as Ryan, lost 13 fewer games, and won almost a hundred more!

Also, in terms of evaluating players, it baffles me how a stat like lifetime strikeout total can be placed against wins or winning pct. What is the foremost object of a pitcher's efforts? To strike people out? I'd have thought it was to win games for the team... A lot of folks nowadays seem to think Ryan never really accepted that principle.

Again, not saying that Ryan wasn't a great pitcher for a long stretch, and amazingly durable. But if I had to choose someone to lead a team to a pennant and win a bunch of games (as opposed to striking out a bunch of guys and maybe authoring a no-hitter), there are about a hundred guys I would pick before Nolan.

I am guessing there is a very strong correlation between high strikeout totals and success. Ryan is a bit of a unique case, but to suggest there is somehow some incompatibility between striking people out and winning makes no sense.

Lefty O'Doul. On and off the field, amazing guy.

no incompatibility - but it's the whole picture that matters
 

Sorry, I never said that. There is definite correlation between K rates and success - extreme power pitchers in general do have more success and have much longer careers than extreme finesse guys.

But there's a lot of space between the extremes. For me the issue is between Ryan, who seemed to believe his primary mission was to strike everybody out all the time, and guys like Maddux, Glavine, Spahn, later Grove, later Matty, and probably later Walter, who struck out above-average numbers of batters because they knew how to get the most out of their arms and their knowledge of the game. But they didn't have an obsession with velo and strikeouts and they understood that the primary goal was for the team to win more games than their opponents. If they struck out 12 and won, great - if they struck out 5 and won, equally great!

I just can't get past someone with that incredible arm totaling 292 losses - losing 48 games for every 52 he won! (And it's not like we have a small sample size to evaluate :))

No pitcher controls how many runs his own team scores which is half the determinant of a win or a loss. He can only control how many he gives up. Ryan's ERA was essentially the same as Carlton's.

I'm a huge HH fan and his Collins McCarthy is one of my whales. Good luck finding his Zeenut in decent condition at a sane price.

Feller won 4 more games for 1946 Indians than Ryan did for the 74 Angels. I wouldn't say somehow because he won four more games. I think you're making a mountain out of a mole hill.

Ryan averaged 232 innings a year over 27 seasons and threw in the upper 90s to 100 the entire time. He was a freak. His hobby status is deserved.

Ohtani can thank Lefty for planting the seeds of Japanese baseball

I think Nolan Ryan's cards are valued relatively highly compared to his actual value to his team, but that doesn't make him overvalued. Ryan wasn't a great pitcher - .526 winning %, 112 ERA+ - but he was historic. He threw 7 no-hitters, struck out 5714 batters, had the lowest career H/9 of all-time, and pitched for 27 seasons - I don't understand why you wouldn't understand why he is valued specially.

Hobby value isn't based on baseball value but how a player is perceived. You could argue that Don Sutton was as good - the same number of wins, 36 fewer losses, 108 ERA+ - but he's not valued by collectors anywhere near Ryan, and why would he be? There has never been and may never be another pitcher like Ryan.

I'm not the world's biggest Ryan fan, and I don't think he was as good as Seaver or Carlton or maybe even Palmer in that era, but to me it's just wrong to say he was not a great pitcher. He was a great pitcher.

I think I said more than I meant to when I said Ryan wasn't a great pitcher - he was great. But there were other great pitchers with similar value - Mussina, say, or Jenkins - whose cardboard is not valued similarly. That's all I meant to say, at least.

I would agree Fergie isn't that popular in the hobby. Neither is Palmer. Or Carlton, really. Hard to compare Mussina from the era of massive overproduction and scads of mainstream sets every year.

Warren Spahn, Hoyt Wilhelm and Phil Niekro are three extreme finesse guys who serve as counterexamples.

;)

Even Dizzy Dean? And speaking of Dizzy, are his cards overpriced or underpriced?

:confused:

How about Jackie Robinson? Aren't his cards quite pricey compared to even those of Yogi Berra, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron?

:confused:

I feel they are overpriced, too. To me, it has everything to do with Jackie as a figurehead for Civil Rights vs. his actual performance. He appeals to today's woke mentality, too, so prices just keep rising. (Boy, do I hate the term "woke". I shuddered when typing it.)

Tim,

First off, I'd politely like to take the superhuman Walter Johnson out of what I say below.

The other pitchers you used for comparison in your last post all actually had good/great teams helping them secure higher winning percentages quite often in their careers. Ryan couldn't be expected to win all the games on his own with absolutely no aid from some disgustingly terrible teams. Aside from 1969, which was so early on for him, when did he ever have any support? His W-L totals are not solely his doing. Not to mention that he was barely used in 1969; less than 90 IP.

Every collection needs a Jackie ...

I don't think the "woke mentality" is terribly prevalent in this segment of the hobby dominated by older white men. I do think the collective respect for U.S. history elevates his status significantly, no question.

I picked up my first this year thanks to another member -- it's just a beautiful piece.

There are lots of new collectors who are younger. Yes, most may be into modern material, but if they make the jump into vintage, as some have and more will continue to do, they will undoubtedly be drawn to Jackie, thereby keeping the values rising. That's who I was referring to.

I would think you would want future generations to be drawn to someone like Jackie Robinson.

I think people underestimate Robinson as a player.

No, he was not on the Hornsby, Collins, Lajoie, Morgan, Gehringer level but a lot of that is due to having a shorter career. His 162 game average is 16 HR, 23 SB, 111 runs, 87 RBIs with a .313/.410/.477 slash which translates to an .887 OPS and 133 OPS+.

And he his third (after Hornsby and Ross Barnes) in WAR/162 for second basemen. ROY, MVP, 7-time all star (in 10 MLB seasons). No Gold Gloves were awarded while he played but I am not aware of him being regarded as a defensive liability. And I don't know how to measure intangibles (hustle, leadership, distracting the pitcher, etc.), but if anyone had them, he did.

He was 28 years old as a rookie. His averages would be so much better if he started as a 20 year old like many others. No point of comparing him to anyone as far as numbers go. He would be in that group easily if he had a full career like they did. I know you acknowledged his short career but take his late start and the abuse he endured and I'll easily put him on their level.

My underrated player that is either forgotten or nobody has heard of to begin with is Addie Joss.

Deadball era pitcher, died at age 31 from tubercular meningitis before the 1911 season began. Cleveland Naps, along with Lajoie, Elmer Flick and Cy Young, for a time. Joss's first MLB start was a one-hit shutout in 1902, and then in 1908 he pitched the 2nd perfect game of the modern era against the White Sox. He pitched another no-hitter in 1910. 160-97 on his career, 45 of those wins were shutouts. Won 20 games or more 4x. 2nd lowest career ERA (behind Ed Walsh) at 1.89 - and his career WHIP - the measure of how difficult a pitcher is to get on base off of - is the lowest of all-time at 0.968. (There are only three pitchers all-time with more than 1k innings with a career WHIP under 1 - Joss, Ed Walsh, and Jacob deGrom...) In this respect compared to Nolan Ryan - famously in addition to the no-no's and K's - the most difficult pitcher to get a base hit off of percentage-wise - Ryan's career WHIP is not in the top 300 all-time. When I see fanatic Facebook posts about how Nolan Ryan is apparently the greatest pitcher of all time - I sometimes ask people if they've ever heard of Addie Joss...

You read in multiple places where Joss was comparable to Mathewson or Johnson, he just gets forgotten because he died so young.

I don't know, obviously I wasn't around 120 years ago - but I like the story and the idea of Joss as kind of this mythical, obscure HOF'er. He's got both a portrait and a pitching pose T206, and then what must be the first ever "In Memorium" card that was issued after he died in the T205 set.

Well, my point was that he was underestimated as a player...and I guess I did the same thing!

Why "deserved"? I don't get it
 

I would agree, if his "hobby status" were anywhere on par with pitchers of his overall caliber like Sutton and Blyleven, whose numbers are very similar in WL PCT, ERA, durability, and even shutouts - (Nolan 61, Bert 60, Don 58) -

I wouldn't even kick if it was on par with guys from that era who were clearly greater overall than he was, like Gibson, Seaver, and Carlton.

But the point is that the value of his cards is nowhere near those other guys - it far outdistances them.

So, it is what it is - we're in a wacky hobby, and that's part of why it's fun. But don't expect me to agree that it's deserved in the face of the numbers.

PS: Don't you think it means something that of all the starting pitchers in the HOF (who are in because of pitching as opposed to other contributions), Ryan would have the absolute worst winning percentage (.526) if not for good old Eppa Rixey (.515)?

Team WL PCT as a factor
 

But were Ryan's teams really THAT much worse than those of others? We're talking about a 20+ plus year stretch, after all. There were some good ones in there too - and Seaver, Carlton, Blyleven, etc. (everybody but Yankees) endured some bad teams.

You may be right, but it just seems to me it would even out over long careers- maybe not completely, but to a great extent.

We're talking about some huge disparities in pitcher WL PCT - Ryan's .526 vs. Seaver's .603, for example. Even Carlton's .574, which doesn't sound that great, represents 5 more wins and 48 fewer losses than Ryan.

I'm doing some research on this question just because it interests me - preliminary results are interesting!

WL Records of Ryan's teams (1968-1992 and half of 1993): 2062 Wins, 2010 Losses .506

Team Records without Ryan's decisions (1968-1992 and half of 1993): 1738 wins, 1718 Losses .502

Doesn't look like he played for that many horrible teams...

Jackie Robinson is a towering figure, IMO. His accomplishments in the context of the enormous resistance to his even playing the game are just astounding.

But it’s also worth considering that he, like so many others, was in WWII between 1942 and 1944. In ‘41, he was graduating college and playing a bit of pro football. So misfortune really prevented his baseball career from taking off before ‘45, which means that the color line, as horrible as it was, may not have had a huge impact on his final stats.

A couple of other things - I’ve seen video of him playing - I’m sure it’s available on YouTube, and man he must have been intimidating for catchers and pitchers. I can imagine that no one who was then active had seen anything like him. Also, Rachel Robinson is still alive, age 102. Due to Jackie’s sadly early death, she’s been a widow for more than half a century.

I grew up idolizing Nolan Ryan. His popularity exploded in the early 1990's when he went to the Rangers and continued to add no-hitters, and pass milestones like his 5k strikeout and 300th win. He was a humble, unassuming guy, and I read all his books and he generally just became my favorite player outside of my (favorite team) Cubs. His early cards when I was a young teenager who had just got into vintage quickly shot through the roof. The RC was out of the question, but I badly wanted just any card of Nolan with the Mets - could not make even that happen until I was older as a teenager. I eventually was also able to land a passable (but very OC) '73 Topps Ryan - arguably his greatest season - that I treasured for quite some time.

What bugs me today is the legion of fanboys and ostensibly younger people on social media who somehow have the idea that pitching is only about no-hitters and strikeouts. Nolan is "The GOAT" and somehow should be equated with Mathewson, Johnson, Grove, Koufax, Gibson, Maddux et al. in such groups. I'm sorry but this is simply not the case. I'm fine calling Ryan "the most amazing" pitcher of all time due to his unparalleled longevity, records that will never be approached and all that, but he's far from the best who ever lived.

The fact that an entire new generation of fans seem to not even know who pitchers like Gibson, Seaver, Carlton, Palmer, and others were because they are so bowled over by Nolan Ryan is troubling. Wins, and winning percentage for pitchers I can understand maybe aren't quite considered in same light as they were 50 years ago, but they should still count for something. It also ticks me off because as someone who is still very much a Nolan Ryan fan - I now have his complete run of at least the base Topps cards - they are maligning his true legacy! You can be a great, first ballot HOF pitcher and still not be the single "greatest" of all time. Nothing wrong with that.

The only arguments against Ryan have been statistically based but this is a discussion about undervalued HOFers, of which Ryan isn’t one. This thread exists because value is not exclusively tied to performance and yet someone still finds it hard to believe that collectors are interested in someone like Nolan Ryan.

You may not be referring to me directly - but I don't find it hard to believe that collectors are interested in Ryan, and never said that my comments were 100% on task to the original subject matter of the thread. :)

No my comments were directed toward the person equating Ryan with Don Sutton and Bert Blyleven, pitchers who are not the all time strike out king, who didn’t throw 7 no hitters and who weren’t successful for 27 seasons with what might have been the most perfect arm baseball will ever see.

It isn’t difficult to understand why Ryan occupies a higher place, at least in my opinion.

Right. And to me those points are Ryan's greatest asset. He was more just astoundingly unique than he was great. I don't know though why people have such a hard time recognizing that.

I have not verified this.

Nolan Ryan had 198 career non-win quality starts. He was 0-107 with a 2.27 ERA, 1.166 WHIP, & 9.77 K/9 in those starts.

But this thread is about players whose on field performance hasn’t equated in similar hobby success. Ryan is not part of that conversation. I don’t think there’s anything that needs to be said about Ryan because he’s exactly where he should be in terms of his hobby popularity.

To show you my long-term "perspective" and perspicacity, I traded a 1968 Nolan Ryan rookie card to a dealer for something like $400 circa 1992 simply because I had no interest in building a set of the 1968 Topps Baseball cards.

:eek:

Not difficult to understand. I don't love that set. Even the Ryan just taken on aesthetic qualities is not the best looking card in the world. But, like many others for which that can be said - it's become iconic more for what it is than purely how it looks.

Early on, especially after the 1969 World Series, it was the Jerry Koosman card.

Better than the 69 where he is pretending to be throwing the ball as it sits in his glove.

Agreed. I don't love that either, but had to get one in decent shape for my run. My favorite early Ryan is the '70 Topps high number. It's a bit of an awkward pose, and if possible Nolan looks even deer-in-the-headlights younger than he did on his first two cards.

Clearly more unique than great
 

I think everybody recognizes his uniqueness - I certainly do. And that's the basis of his appeal to collectors. I've never disputed any of that. But as you acknowledge, uniqueness doesn't necessarily equate to all-time greatness, and my comments have been intended to maintain that distinction rather than letting it get blurred.


Over long careers the W-L records of a player's teams tend to flatten out fairly close to .500 (unless you're a Yankee or something), and his own W-L record can only move the needle so much.

Just FYI, here are the team records of Ryan and the other HOF starters who debuted between 1962 and 1970

Ryan's teams with his decisions: 2062-2010 .5064
without his decisions 1738-1718 .5029
He improved his teams' Win PCT by .0035

Carlton's teams with his decisions: 1789-1578 .5313
without his decisions 1460-1334 .5225
He improved his teams' Win PCT by .0088

Jenkins's teams with his decisions: 1441-1405 .5063
without his decisions 1157-1179 .4952
He improved his teams' Win PCT by .0110

Palmer's teams with his decisions: 1756-1242 .5857
without his decisions 1488-1090 .5772
He improved his teams' Win PCT by .0085

Seaver's teams with his decisions: 1592-1584 .5013
without his decisions 1281-1379 .4816
He improved his teams' Win PCT by .0197

Blyleven's teams with his decisions: 1691- 1651 0.5060
without his decisions: 1404-1401 0.5005
He improved his teams' Win PCT by .0055

Sutton's teams with his decisions: 1918-1662 .5358
without his decisions 1594-1406 .5313
He improved his teams' Win PCT by .0045

Hunter's teams with his decisions: 1194-1038 .5350
without his decisions 970-872 .5266
He improved his teams' Win PCT by .0084

Niekro’s teams with his decisions: 1684-1765 .4882
without his decisions 1366-1491 .4781
He improved his teams' Win PCT by .0101

Gaylord Perry's teams with his decisions: 1815-1686 .5184
without his decisions 1501-1421 .5137
He improved his teams' Win PCT by .0047
Perry is an interesting case- he was really two pitchers, a so-so toiler with excellent Giants teams, and then a truly great pitcher for mediocre teams afterwards:
-SF team records 1962-63 (half seasons) 1964-1971 914-708 .5635 / Perry's record in those years 134-109 .5625 (no better than the teams)
-post-SF team records, 1972-1983 901-978 .4795 / Perry's record in those years 180-156 .5357 (.1632 improvement over team - much better than the teams)


SUMMARY OF IMPROVEMENT OF the TEAM RECORD:
Seaver .0197
Jenkins .0110
Niekro .0101
Carlton .0088
Palmer .0085
Hunter .0084
Blyleven .0055
Perry .0047
Sutton .0045
Ryan .0035


By this measure, Seaver is by far the greatest "winning pitcher" of this group of HOFers, and his teams overall, along with Niekro's, were the worst of the group by a big margin. Ryan's teams were middling but not terrible without him (better than Blyleven's, Niekro's, Jenkins' and Seaver's) - and he didn't make them much better in W-L terms.

for comparison, here's Walter Johnson's record:
Johnson's teams with his decisions: 1491-1523 .4947
without his decisions: 1074-1244 .4633
He improved his teams' Win PCT by .0314

I would imagine that this is the greatest improvement that's ever been made by a single pitcher on his team's record. Even so, people seem to have a somewhat inflated notion of how awful Johnson's teams were. They weren't all awful by any means.

Here are the figures I used. For 1907 and 1927 I included half the team's W-L record since Johnson played about half the season.
1907 24 51
1908 67 85
1909 42 110
1910 66 85
1911 64 90
1912 91 61
1913 90 64
1914 81 73
1915 85 68
1916 76 77
1917 74 79
1918 72 56
1919 56 84
1920 68 84
1921 80 73
1922 69 85
1923 75 78
1924 92 62
1925 96 55
1926 81 69
1927 42 34

You'll notice there are 10 winning seasons and 10 losing seasons in that time (with the 76-77 record in 1916 as a wash). The atrocious records of 1907 and 1909 have a particularly large impact on the overall W-L record. If you remove those two seasons, the overall team record goes from .495 to .510.

This is not meant to diminish Johnson's status as GOAT but to reinforce it.

I just wanted to give some context on claims made that "X or Y played on terrible teams his whole career and therefore..." [fill in the blank]

That is a really useless way to evaluate a pitcher's value to a team. Actually, it's more useless than wins, which is also a useless stat.

Unique? Yes. Seven no hitters and all-time K record? Sorry, that equates to greatness. No amount of stats or words will change that.

Yes, there are other pitchers who are great for different reasons than why Ryan was legendary.

I guess I just don't understand why it's meaningful to measure a pitcher in this way. A decent pitcher would probably improve a terrible team's winning percentage more than a great pitcher would improve a great team's percentage. For example. And I would bet there are all sorts of confounding variables too.