What YOU would pick is utterly irrelevant to your statement.

You said, since you keep trying to pretend its something else,

James, in actual reality whether you like it or not, very literally did in a numbered list. He selected Perry over Ryan. Whether you agree with that choice is irrelevant to your false claim you made and refuse to walk back.

Bill James wasn’t asked the question and his ranking isn’t taking it into consideration. Would you choose Perry over Nolan Ryan? That was the question. The hobby has not.

I feel like I'm in a Kafka novel or something. Someone's ranking of pitchers does not imply that that someone would take the higher ranked one over the lower ranked one. Now, you are a housepainter?

All cats have paws. Rover has paws. Therefore, Rover is a cat.

So James does not count as a person on Earth because... He was not asked the question. Therefore, very literally selecting Perry over Ryan does not count, because you didn't ask him.

I mean I can just lie and make stuff up all day too. Dave Stewart is the greatest pitcher of all time, and no one on Earth will say otherwise. When people prove that wrong, I'll just pretend these people do not count as people on Earth. Man, it sure is easier when I can just completely disconnect from discernible reality and lie.

The answer to that, and any other comparative question, is inherent in a ranking.

It does not count, because how we do know Bill James is a person on Earth and not a space cyborg pretending to be a person?

Great novella.

Well damn, some earthlings who would take Perry over Ryan.

https://www.threads.net/@johnjames21...inumxYoE?hl=en

I bet there are a lot of such earthlings.

Why haven’t you guys said you would choose Perry over Ryan?

Because it's not my claim, my claim for the 10,000th time is that Perry and Ryan are different types of pitchers who produced pretty similar values. I know you guys would like easier things to argue against because this statement is, for mysterious reasons, quite upsetting to several people but none of you can think of an actual argument against it, but I am not interested in changing my claim.

My subsequent claim is that your claim that no one on Earth would select Perry over Ryan is demonstrably false, and that you trying to pretend James does not count because you don't like that is both really funny and completely disconnected from reality.

I think it's a pretty close call that reasonably could go either way, which is the whole point.

I was talking about a theoretical situation where two guys are going to have similar careers who would you choose: the junk specialist or Nolan Ryan. And I said no one would choose the junk specialist. You won’t even say you would.

There is a transcript. You claimed no one on Earth would select Perry over Ryan. Bill James literally did. Whether or not I would is utterly irrelevant to your claim. Your claim was proven false. Stop lying and claiming he didn’t.

Only one!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The transcript will reflect the same hypothetical ignored by your posts. You can say you would choose Perry if that’s the case.

Yeah.

My claim is that they are pretty similar in regards to career value. I am not interested in defending an unrelated claim you want me to make because you can’t find anything against my actual claim in the transcript repeated over and over and over and over. So far your only arguments against this are that Ryan gave up only slightly more runs and telling absolute flat out lies that are provably false. I guess it’s easier to tell bald faced lies when you get to be anonymous unlike the rest of this who partake in debate here.

See Table 1.
https://sabr.org/journal/article/the...s-long-career/

By ranking Gaylord 6 or 8 places higher, Bill James already did exactly that. You can disagree with him, he doesn't have a monopoly on truth, but you can't deny the facts.

In response to what you said about their similar careers I said people would still choose Ryan. You haven’t said you wouldn’t.

Some thoughts on the subject...

Baseball fandom IS emotion. You can’t possibly quantify what makes a player so beloved that his cards are ‘overvalued.’


With Nolan Ryan, there’s a truckload of reasons for the adoration and here are a base (pun intended) few:

• Miracle Mets
He started his career as a Met, in the huge New York market, and was part of their 1969 championship, which for the longest time (perhaps still?) was the greatest World Series victory ever. That cast a long shadow that still follows him to this day. We Mets fans are nutjobs. His “Folo card” (first solo) is from that 1969 championship year (which intangibly adds to its value) and is highly sought after everywhere you go.

• Multigenerational
Some players lasted long enough that fathers and sons both were able to cheer for them in their younger days, but it’s a very rare event when someone is multi-multigenerational (probably not a word). Grandfathers, their sons, and their grandchildren all could’ve been actively rooting for Ryan in their times. He played on and on and on, and never seemed to lose his...

• Fastball
Like power hitters and their monster home runs, so is a blazing fastball strikeout to a pitcher. You want him to 'K' the batter, and the bigger the name of the hitter, the better. Ryan was perceived as throwing the ball faster than any human being alive ever. No way to quantify that, of course, but that’s what fans thought every time he took the mound.

But even the word "fast" doesn’t really cover it. He threw super hard, which is a word that combines blazing velocity with stopping power. You'd think anyone stepping into the batter's box would feel intimidated and backed into a corner facing him. They'd have to keep their front foot at the ready for a quick bail out, all the while thinking, "If he hits me, I'm dead!!!" :eek:

• Silent Warrior
His approach to the game is something that should be emulated by all players these days. He went out every fourth day and did his job. There was no showboating or look-at-me-ism. If he was able to pitch, he went out and pitched. We all remember when his no-hitter and Rickey Henderson’s record-breaking stolen base occurred on the same day. Rickey declared himself “the greatest,” and Nolan simply smiled and doffed his cap to the crowd. That work ethic combined with modesty goes a long way, especially in a hard-working state like Texas.

This is an outright lie. Run the tape again.

Bill James is someone on Earth. Peter and I are not the only people on Earth. We produced an expert who very literally selected Perry over Ryan. Whether I would or would not is irrelevant. Stop lying.

For the millionth time, my argument is that they are pretty similar in career value, very close together in career value. Which one edges the other is absolutely irrelevant, because my argument is that they are pretty similar. I cannot dumb it down for you anymore.

Which pitcher would you rather have?

For like the fifth time, I am not interested in starting a new argument because you keep lying and cannot find an argument against what I actually said. I know it would be a lot easier for you to change my position, but I am not changing my position.

So Nolan Ryan then.

Are you genuinely illiterate?

OMG the SABR guy said it -- he would rank Ryan behind Perry.

Excuses, Excuses

One excuse given for Ryan’s unimpressive winning percentage is that he pitched for poor teams. This argument must be rejected. It is true that Ryan outpitched the teams on which he played, but it wasn’t by much. His 12-13 composite from 1966-1969 (he didn’t pitch in the majors in 1967) gave him a .480 winning percentage, while the Mets in those three years went 239-246 for .493. In 1970-1991, he won at a .526 rate, compared to his teams’.504. On average, Ryan was roughly 13-12 for a team that was 81-80. Even when he pitched for good teams, Ryan had records just a few games over .500.

The Wins Above Team (WAT) statistic, which compares a pitcher’s W-L mark to that of his team also fails to support the Ryan-was-a-hard-luck-pitcher claim. Total Baseball lists the top 100 pitchers in WAT, and Ryan (along with Wynn and Sutton) doesn’t make the top 100. Through 1996, Young was first, with a career WAT of 99.7. Babe Adams (194-140) and Allie Reynolds (182-107) tie for ninety-eighth place with 20.2. Russ Ford, with his short career (99-71), makes the list with 24.3. With a WAT of less than 20.2, Ryan is less than one win above his team per year. In contrast, Seaver and Koufax with respective WATs of 58.9 (sixth place) and 30.6 (fortieth place) respectively, average three wins above their teams per season.

Nolanmania

So why does Ryan get so much more adulation than Niekro, Perry, and Sutton, in whose class he belongs (I would rank him behind Perry, but ahead of Niekro and Sutton), and even more than Seaver, Carlton, and Jim Palmer, direct and far superior contemporaries? I think it may be that every time he pitched, fans and sportwriters anticipated something special. Even on a bad night, the fastball was explosive. On a good night, he could strike out double figures. On a great night, he might pitch a no-hitter. With Ryan, total domination was always a possibility. Total domination always excites us.

Still, it is strange that the public — and especially the writers — substituted the glitter of strikeouts and no-hitters for the gold of victories. When you get right down to it, Ryan’s mediocre record is inexplicable: he was difficult to hit, had good ERAs, and didn’t allow many homers (his top home runs allowed in a season was 20 in 1982). If you refer back to Table 1, you will see that with the exception of Ed Plank, every pitcher from Grove down to Carlton was considered, in his prime, the best pitcher in his league, if not in all of baseball. Ryan can’t come close to making that claim. And just because he should have been the equal of Grove, Mathewson, Johnson, Seaver, et al. doesn’t mean he was.

Too late Peter, his new argument is that when he said nobody on Earth, only you and I qualify, and since my position is that they are pretty similar, that somehow means via the transitive property of he's-completely-making-shit-up that I pick Ryan and so he is right.

Two Nolan Ryan’s. Good choice.

To channel the Rodgers and Hart song, you didn't say yes, you didn't say no, therefore I'll take that as a yes.

And the question is asked, because even while telling outright lies, he was unable to come up with an argument against what was actually said. Got to shift the goalpost. Incredible lol

You use the word "math" a lot. I'm not sure you know what it means.

True. I am the worst and stupidest man alive, I am not even aware of math even is as a concept or a word.

Now, it is still true that Perry and Ryan produced pretty similar value over their careers while being two different types of pitchers.

He’s the only one here who understands math. Also everyone else is getting emotional, even though he’s the one who has written like 100 posts and 20,000 words on the subject today. What a total lack of self awareness.

The argument is not without merit. I only wish you had chosen someone who wasn’t a (self professed) blatant cheater who actually took pride in his cheating. The man does not belong in the HOF not that I consider myself much of a moral arbiter.

Sincere question, was there ever a serious movement to keep him out, or even a serious objection to him while he was active? I don't recall there being any. He won two Cy Youngs, for example, and I don't recall anyone (at least in 82) saying but but there should be an asterisk blah blah.

And he refuses to engage any other discussion outside the extremely limited and pedantic parameters he has set, like a petulant child. His pedantry in this is only eclipsed by his extremist abuse of a figure of speech by insisting it be taken literally. Ironically, he isn't pedantic enough to recognize the distinction between ranking a career and choosing a person as a better player.

He made it in the third ballot with some saying the delay was due to his various shenanigans.

I already concede that I am the worst man to ever live and the stupidest. Now, can you finally put together a coherent, logical argument not relying on your magical ability to artistically analyze pitchers free of math, that my claim that Perry and Ryan had pretty similar value over their careers is false?

Maybe there would be more scrutiny and outrage today, different mentality/tolerance level? I mean it's really hard to believe he only got caught once.

I don't know how many of the stories are true and how much was Perry blowing smoke for attention or to keep people guessing. If he did cheat frequently I would be sympathetic to an argument that he doesn't belong in the Hall.

That one is still lost on me. How can I rank A higher than B but think B is a better pitcher? Isn't the essence of the ranking to order who I think the best pitchers were? Seems non-Euclidean or something.

My expectations are low but even I am a little surprised this is the argument they want to stick with. That ranking pitchers by their careers and choosing Perry 16th and Ryan 24th is not ranking Perry over Ryan is just... seriously lol. The response always has an advantage in the Socratic over a claim. I set the claim, they just have to get 1 argument that disproves it, with unlimited tries while I don't get to reset my claim. Surely there is a better argument against my claim than this absurdity that James' ordered rankings of the best pitchers are not ranking who is better.

Let me give an example. Len Bias is on no one's list of the top 100 basketball players of all time. Yet if I were choosing a team and he was available, I'm picking him. Career rankings of players take far more into account than just a player's ability. I'm not saying James would choose Ryan, just that his list of career rankings doesn't answer that question.

Or the SABR person who says expressly, I rank Ryan below Perry. Could he really say that yet think Ryan is better? Call me pedantic too, but I don't get it.

Your understanding of math is amazing compared to your understanding of logic. (Hint: it's not good).

It's not pedantic, it's just a lack of nuance.

For the third time, I am the stupidest man to ever live. You are the smartest. You are the greatest logician in human history. I am vermin. Fine.

Can you put together a coherent, logical argument not relying only your magical art you can't define that the claim I made is wrong?

Explain the difference please.

For the 5th time, I was not debating your ridiculously limited point of career value stats. It's a stupid exercise that you have insisted on because you are incapable of actually discussing the comparisons of the players.