Quote:
Originally Posted by rats60
Nolan Ryan is one of the greatest pitchers ever. He has one of the lowest FIPs of the live ball era, the lowest H/9 ever and his ERA of 3.19 is solid despite having some pretty bad defenses behind him. He should have won 4 Cy Young awards (1973, 1977, 1981 and 1987). Although his cards are as overrated/overvalued as his on field performance was undervalued.
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i appreciate Bill James' take on Ryan:
"I know there are probably none of you in the audience who don’t remember Nolan Ryan, but as an organizing device, I’m going to pretend there are, anyway. Nolan Ryan was the ultimate power pitcher. Ryan threw harder than any other pitcher of his generation or perhaps any generation, and it wasn’t like he did this once. Ryan could stand on the mound and throw a hundred miles an hour for 9 innings, 10 innings, 11, 12, 13. He would throw more than 200 pitches in a game, come back three days later ready to do it again. He did this for years in a four-man rotation, switched to a five-man rotation and pitched another fifteen years. He threw no-hitters almost as a matter of routine. He holds the single-season record for strikeouts, and broke the career record for strikeouts by some ridiculous margin.
Nolan Ryan was Roger Clemens’ boyhood idol, but whereas Clemens became a genuinely great pitcher Ryan was not. Ryan was the most impressive pitcher who ever lived. He did absolutely phenomenal things with such regularity that people took it for granted. But he was not a great pitcher because he never compromised, which means that he never adjusted. He was, in a sense, a perpetual rookie. He was out there to strike the hitter out—period, even when he was 44 years old. He could be behind the number eight hitter 2-0 with the bases empty, and in his mind he was still working on a strikeout. The concept of “let him hit it and see what happens” absolutely wasn’t there for him."