With one of greatest arms in baseball history Nolan Ryan did some things that will never be done again. For 27 years he was one of the best pitchers in baseball. There is no way this man was overrated and this video solidifies it.
I know it probably sounds weird, but I feel like most people talk s*** on him because of some weird kind of jealousy. He's an absolute stud, a stand up guy and had a career that will never be duplicated!
I watched his 5th no hitter on ABCs Game of the Week against the Dodgers in 81. Nolan and Randy are the Best I've seen in my day. I'm 55 and started becoming a fan in 1979.
Yeah and it's really a shame. Who says Reggie Jackson struck out more times than anyone? Nobody. But he did. I don't know why there's such a push to drag Nolan Ryan down. He's a great guy.
He is the iron man of pitchers. He would’ve won so many more games if he would had been on average offensive teams. I equate him to Barry Sanders who had an amazing career in the NFL with no offensive line blocking for him.
I got to seen him pitch once back in the mid 70's. The Angeles were playing the A's at home and he was on fire. By the seventh inning he was a few strikouts from setting the strikout record and I thought I was going to winess an historical baseball event but he didn't come out for the eighth inning. I couldn't believe it, Ryan was a iron man, he doesn't get pulled. The Angeles were losing1-0/2-1 at that time on a homer by Tony Armas and end up losing. I never found out why he was pulled. The Angels were a sub 500 team for much of Ryan's time with them. There was a saying " Tanana and Ryan and then start crying".
Lol I remember as a teen being impressed with Nolan winning the NL ERA title in ‘87 and thinking ‘ thats cool, an ERA title near the end of your career’ who knew what was to come after 1987? Amazing
Horribly bad teams? Nonsense. Ryan had a w/l of 52.6%, playing on teams (Mets, Angels, Astros, Rangers) that had a cumulative w/l of 50.4%. That's not great, but not awful. Meaning, that Ryan was just marginally better than the teams that he played on.
@@mnm1273 It's not the number; it's how many per nine innings pitched. Obviously someone the a career the length of Ryan will reck a big totals. Having said that, he did walk 4.7 batters per nine innings pitched; no other quality pitcher comes close.He also struck out 9.5 batters per nine, ranking him near (but not at) the top of quality pitchers.
You really have to look no further than Tom Seaver to find a better pitcher. Seaver has a 109.9 War vs Ryan an at 81.3, they both had 61 shutouts but it took Ryan 126 more starts and Seaver had 3 Cy Youngs vs 0 for Ryan. You could probably argue Steve Carlton was better than Ryan so Ryan may be no better than 3rd in his generation.
I saw him pitch in person many times in Anaheim. He can not be overrated. You can't know unless you watch. He is the GOAT. I died when he was let go by the Angels. I have never recovered.
@themotherfdude8891 I've watched since the 80s, not gonna include pitchers like Cy Young Babe Ruth ect because I never saw them pitch. The best one I've ever seen hands down was Pedro Martinez. He pitched in the steroid era and absolutely dominated everyone. The league average era was like 4.50 and Martinez was under 2 some years.
I'm a huge Ryan fan, but I'd agree maybe he isn't the goat. But he was a solid, dependable pitcher over a super long time. He played to his strengths and sometimes it got him burned. Throwing hard sometimes leads to walks and high fastballs lead to a lot of homruns. He NEVER had the best 3 pitches like Pedro Martinez. He had the best fastball and later, a really good curve. So he picked to his strength. it's really tiring to see these morons who never played past little league, dogging Ryan. Saying shit like give me Koufax. Koufax sucked ass his first few years, too. You want him from those years? Nolan Ryan is a great representative of hard work and resilience. And anyone who wants to say shit like "he isn't all that", is just a troll and bad for baseball.
@user-xg5jb9td4p agreed 👍... I didn't mean to disrespect Ryan. Longevity is important and impressive. Hell, the fast ball was great, but I just wouldn't but him as the greatest. There's a few guys that stood out that I got to watch, the 2 greatest pitches were probably Pedro's change up and Mariano Riveras cutter. No one could hit Pedro's change up, and Rivera either broke everyone's bat, caused a weak ground out or strikeout with that one pitch.
This team would win lotsof games. Maybe it wouldn't be as effective as a high-homer team at scoring runs, but it would win. Most of these are good to great offensive players.
As the years go by you really do have to appreciate what an absolute savage Ryan was just a different kind of animal & it is mind blowing not one Cy young with all the other accomplishments I don't think it mattered.
Closest to Cy Young was: 1973 2nd: He went 21-16 with 2.86; Palmer went 22-9/2.40 1974 3rd: Wend 22-16 with 2.89; Catfish Hunter went 25-12/2.49 1977 3rd: Went 19-16 with 2.77; Sparky Lyle went 13-5/2.17 He only had two 20-win seasons. He had a good lifetime era of 3.19, and pitched 222 complete games, which is darn good. He was a great pitcher.
It should actually be awarded as The Nolan Ryan Award instead of The Cy Young one. Granted, Cy was great, however, he holds the record for losses. Nolan played for terrible teams & still managed to set records, such as strikeouts, that will never be broken. Sure, he both hit a lot of batters, as well as walking a lot, but, had he played for The Reds, or Yankees during His Prime, these stats would be overlooked.
he was maybe the toughest pitcher to HIT, without, by any means, being the toughest pitcher to BEAT. his fastball was legendary, he had amazing longevity. he had a curve and a change. he holds records for strikeouts and no hitters. he had some fine overall seasons. but... he walked more hitters than anyone else, and he through the most wild pitches. he didnt have any semblance of a pick-off move, so those guys he walked could get around to second and third pretty easily. there are no worse fielding pitchers, so a sac-bunt can score a runner from third against him. his excellence is in quantity (wins, strikeouts, years, miles-per-hour). but there is plenty of cause for the FACT that he lost 48% of his decisions. its not as if he would have had a 75% winning percentage on better teams. he was horrifically unreliable. OF COURSE he's very overrated. you see, he's truly amazing. an obvious first-ballot hall of famer, but he's just NOT one of the top 5-6 pitchers in history, and that's where many people rank him. so, like dimaggio, koufax ,rose and ,jeter, he's OVERRATED. because its possible to be quite great, but not AS GREAT as you are commonly ranked. ryan matches up poorly against: seaver, grove, walter johnson, randy johnson, pedro, greg maddux, steve carlton, alexander, bob gibson, and thats 9 guys already, so lets see who is his competition for a 10th place spot: warren spahn, hubbell, cy young, clemens, christy mathewson, feller, palmer,,whitey ford, koufax, addie joss, ed walsh, dazzy vance, marichal, and you get the point. no source with credibility has him in the top 20. so, as long as some of you talk about him like he's a first-place candidate or something, well, thats exactly what OVERRATED means.
I noticed how you never mentioned anything related to how many runs he gave up, which is the most important thing for a pitcher to be good at. Mike Mussina and Roy Halladay were better at preventing runs than Nolan Ryan was.
ERA is the measure for earned runs given up per nine innings: Ryan lifetime: 3.19 Halladay: 3.38 Mussina: 3.68 Ryan wins. Not only that, Ryan maintained a lower ERA despite pitching over 1800 more innings than Mussina and 2600 more than Halladay.
@@ron88303 Halladay and Mussina had better ERA+, which is adjusted for era. Particularly Halladay, who had an ERA+ of 143 or higher nine times, something that Ryan only did once.
Sports Illustrated did an article on him. In it, they said, "When he's good, he's great, but when he isn't." And he was pretty much a .500 pitcher. So, yes, he is overrated. My life on the line, one game, give me Koufax.
Who the hell is saying he's overrated. There will NEVER EVER be another pitcher like him. He has 7 no hitters, 12 One hitters, and 18 two hit games. That can't even be touched.
Who the hell thinks Nolan Ryan is over rated?? Has to be some snowflakes who rather see a guy only pitch 5 innings than end up with 5 tommy john surgeries because hes SAWFT
Nolan Ryan is not overrated because he “lost a lot of games, never won a Cy Young, or walked to many people” None of those things mean anything in determining how good you are. The people who use those arguments to say Nolan Ryan is overrated are just as wrong as the people who say he’s a top 5 pitcher of all time. Nolan Ryan is overrated because he only had 83 WAR in 5000+ innings and only had a career 112 ERA+
@@texasforever7887 Fan graphs uses FIP to calculate WAR which is absolutely ridiculous. FIP can be used to predict how good you could be not how good you currently are. A 112 ERA+ would never feasibly convert to a 107 WAR.
@@texasforever7887 Fan graphs uses FIP to calculate WAR which is ridiculous. FIP can be used to determine how good you could be not how good you currently are. A 112 ERA+ would never feasibly convert to a 107 WAR.
Led the league in walks eight times. Over 200 walks twice. All time leader in walks. Career BB/9 of 4.7. Career ERA+ of 112 (same as Aaron Nola). He was a great pitcher, but let's not get carried away.
Most of his walks were during his time with Mets and the Angels at the beginning of his career. Look at the last 10 years of his career. When he retired he held 51 different records how many people can say that?
The most overrated athlete in sports. He is the third losingest pitcher in MLB history and only tied for fourteenth in wins. All time leader in walks. He has never won ten games more than he lost nor a Cy Young Award. His winning percentage is a little over .500 and his ERA of 3.19 is good but not great. He was only 12-8 in 1986 with the division winning Houston Astros while Mike Scott won the Cy Young award on that same team. He pitched for 27 years...the excuse of bad teams can only go so far, and half the teams he was on were over .500. If I was picking players for a team, I would pick a pitcher who wins over one who makes excuses.
@@mnm1273 hopefully you meant to say something like, "three times more strikeouts than walks is pretty normal for a great pitcher". because ooooohhhhh nooooooo it is not AVERAGE. the average is above 2 by now, but it wasnt in ryan's day. ryan was overrated, we agree. ( see my comment) but no sir a so/bb ratio of 3 is outstanding.
@@ice-iu3vv It's funny to disagree in such a rude know-it-all fashion, when you in fact know very little. I don't have any issue comparing his stats to today's game unadjusted because that's the standard set by the video.
The season that was indicative of how little run support he received over his career was when he lead the league in ERA and Ks and was 8-16. I bet there was never another pitcher under .500 in the history of baseball with best ERA/Ks in a season
He was overrated. Of course you want to cherry pick your stats. We all know he was the most dominating strikeout pitcher of all time, but he was not the most dominating pitcher. He had the most strikeouts but also walked the most guys in history, led the league in losses, and never won a Cy Young. None of that has anything to do with the teams he was on, they have nothing to do with his control and there have been plenty of Cy Young and 20-game winners on bad or average teams. DeGrom with the Mets, Felix with the Mariners, Maddux with the Cubs. Yes He had 7 no hitters..how many walks did He have in each of his no-hitters? Look it up. If he walked 6 or 7 guys, you’d have to to figure at least 1 or 2 of them could have gotten a hit if they were thrown strikes.
Anytime you pitch for 27 years you are going to accumulate losses and walks, look at his walks over the last part of his career. Rickey Henderson has the record for most caught stealing does that make him a bad base stealer? No, he attempted the most and like Ryan he had a long career. As far as Cy Young awards I already addressed this in the video. He should have won in 1973. As far as the no hitters go who cares if he walked guys, no one was still able to get a hit. On top of that he has 3 more than other pitcher. This is also not including all the one and two hitters he threw over his career, players just simply couldn’t hit him.
@@ricktalksbaseballHe can still be great and overrated at the same time. Yea he’s accomplished a ton..but the bottom line is I’d be able to pick 10 pitchers I’d rather have win Me a game than Him.
I don't remember anything in the original post about picking your top 10 pitchers or about if you had one game to win. Blackjack want to bitch about cherry picking stats but wants to cherry pick. Haha He been shut up in his mom's basement for the 22 years of his life and he got shit he needs to say. Hahaha
