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CyI am a Pirates fan and because of this I want Maz to be in the Hall. But I truly feel that he should be there. He was the best defensive 2nd baseman, period. And he was the best 2nd baseman of his time for about 10-15 years. What else does he need to do? When a player is that dominant at his given position, whether it is a glorified position or not, he deserves to be in the HOF.
That brings up a point about Nolan Ryan. The knock against Maz is that he was one-dimensional. That is exactly what Nolan Ryan was. He is the greatest strikeout pitcher of all-time. That is undisputed. But a strikeout is an out, period. It may be slightly better than some outs because a runner can't advance. But it is merely an out. And he did have 7 no hitters. This is extremely impressive, too. But is that enough to make him a HOFer?
When Ryan's record is mentioned, people remark that he played on lousy teams and that is why it is so bad. Well, that may be the case. But if he is to be considered a great, HOF pitcher, shouldn't his stats be considerably better than the teams he played for, irrespective of the team's ineptitude?
I checked two other HOF pitchers' stats to compare with Ryan. I picked Koufax because it was easy (short career) and he is considered a great pitcher. I realize that he did have a short career but let's just check his stats. And remember that his teams were stellar when he was a very young pitcher, which "should" hurt his numbers compared to his teams numbers. The other pitcher I chose was Matty.
The stats that I found are as follows:
Player Teams
W L Pct. W L Pct.
Christy Mathewson 373 188 .665 1456 1080 .574 +.091
Nolan Ryan 324 292 .525 2171 2143 .503 +.022
Sandy Koufax 165 87 .654 1078 814 .569 +.085
The stats indicate that Matty was 9.1% better than his team throughout his entire career, Koufax 8.5% (and that is with him going 4-6 his first two years and his team going 191-116 those years, which would significantly lower his difference). Meanwhile Ryan was 2.2% better than his teams. OK, the people that claim Ryan is a bonafide superstar, would you like your ace pitcher to be only 2.2% better than your average pitcher? I didn't check other pitchers (yet). Try some and see if they wind up better than a pitiful 2.2% increase over their team's average pitcher.
The reason that he is in the HOF is that he was the premier fireball pitcher of his era. People like to see that. But if I had to pick a pitcher to win a must win game for me, Nolan Ryan wouldn't be anywhere near the top of my list. And, so, I don't feel he is in the elite pitchers of the game.
(If anyone wants to see the lifetime stats of these three pitchers with their teams, I have them and could E-mail them to you.)