Making sense of Nolan Ryan's stats and a belated hello

[G1911]

Agreed. K's don't win games when you are also setting walk records and giving up runs. None of his boosters like it acknowledged alongside his K crowns and no hitters that not only did he walk a lot of batters, some years he walked more than twice as many as the #2 walk pitcher in the league. 1977 for example, he walked 204 batters. Jim Palmer was second in the league, with 99. He lost a ton of games this way.

A pitcher's value is a combination of winning (best judged by ERA adjusted for context, I think) and longevity/reliability. Ryan is a great pitcher for lasting 27 years and that inning count. But he was not actually dominating in the context of winning games or not giving up runs, when looked at for the totality of his career. A 112 ERA+ is really low for a HOFer, and far below anyone else considered an 'inner circle' Hall of Famer. He simply was not that great at a pitchers primary job, winning ball games (and I'm not even holding his .526 Win Loss record against him, he can't control his teams offense).


As a 2nd series 1968 card, the Ryan rookie is one of the easiest 60's cards to locate with a very high print run. It's also ugly (and I like the 68 Burlap design, but the split rookies are ugly pretty much every year). I haven't picked one up yet to finish my set because that much money for an overrated ugly rookie seems absurd to me to do. I too would much prefer the high number SP'd 67 Seaver over the Ryan that must have, at least, 20 copies for every Seaver there is. As a collector and not an investor, I'd rather have the 66 Jim Palmer over either of them; it's an actually good looking rookie card of another great hurler of the same period. I'd rather have the tougher high number 69 or 70 Ryan than the 68.

[bobsbbcards]

Welcome to the boards, and nice post!!

[Vegas Cards]

Gotta have some pics to go with the discussion

[Kutcher55]

Nice comments. I agree with you about the Ryan RC. Huge pop count. I suppose it’s one everyone “should” have in their collection but it’s never been a huge target for me. Arguably one of the 25 most famous cards in the hobby so there is that.

As for Ryan himself, very unique career. Probably not as effective as Seaver or Carlton but he owns the all time K record and chicks dig strike outs. He also has seven no hitters, threw the ball as hard as anyone in MLB history. Not sure if he owns the all time official mph record but he used to for quite some time. And yeah he kicked Robin Ventura’s ass.

Here’s the other thing about Nolan Ryan - he was a good looking dude compared to say, Tom Seaver who was more stocky. I’m convinced Nolan Ryan loved posing for baseball cards and that makes him more desirable to collectors. Some of his cards have tremendous imagery. In particular the ‘71 Topps, ‘72, ‘74, ‘76 and ‘80 issues are all just awesome looking baseball cards. Some guys just have the “it” factor.

That’s my 2 cents.