Most undervalued HOFers

[Peter_Spaeth]

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.