Interesting Blyleven stats

[66-70-83-??]

Because he walked more batters than the sum total of many Hall of Famers' careers. Strikeouts are great, but only in the context of a good K:BB ratio. He literally walked more batters than Steve Carlton (the #2 all-time) and Greg Maddux combined. He walked more than Bert Blyleven and Jim Palmer, combined. He walked nearly as many as Phil Niekro and Joe Niekro, two knuckleballers with very long careers, combined.

Strikeouts are great in the context of what the overall results are.

The goal of a pitcher is to get outs and do his part to prevent scoring by allowing walks or hits.

It is ironic that you used Steve Carlton in comparison to Ryan. It doesn't matter that Ryan walked so many more because he allowed far fewer hits.

The career end results were the same :

Ryan career whip = 1.247

Carlton career whip 1.247

Interesting that these two played so many years, so many innings, and ended with an identical WHIP of 1.247

Back to Blyleven- I have always believed that he should be in the HOF. Hopefully this is the year he makes it.

[Migrant Redbird]

I disagree with the following:

In short, my friends..Mr. Ryan was a freak of nature..didnt juice up like some fellow Texas pitchers who idolized him did.The juice he used was pickle juice...I swear to God.....

You followed him around 24/7 for 20 plus years so that you can swear no one ever poked a needle in his butt, aside from a doctor administering legitimate medications? That must have been a gas! Tell me; does his ____ stink?

What the average fan and most of the media seem to be incapable of grasping is that we don't know now and never will never know which players didn't use PEDs at all, whether it was amphetamines, steroids, HGH, or even extracts from animal testicles back before testosterone was isolated and identified. We do know that a few did because they've confessed or been caught, but we'll never know how many used them without being caught. Any ballplayer who played in the modern era is suspect, including every one of them in the HOF, because we simply don't know!

A French researcher injected himself with bovine testes extract back in the 1870's and presented a paper citing the benefits he perceived from that course of treatment. Undoubtedly, many other scientists made similar experiments that weren't documented. It's entirely possible that few ballplayers prior to the modern era were injecting animal testes extracts in an attempt to improve their performance.

That could even explain why Babe Ruth burst upon the scene with a power explosion well beyond that of any previous hitter; he could have had a friend with access to a chemical lab who prepared extracts from animal testicles for him. I made this suggestion a couple years ago; I was surprised to discover recently that the claim was published over 15 years ago as alleged "fact", not the speculation I was making.

I repeat! Any ballplayer with a friend who had access to a decent chemical laboratory could have juiced up with testosterone at any time between about 1880 and 1950. The information was there; the procedure wasn't that complicated. There would have been a substantial health risk involved because of the impurities that would have been injected along with the testosterone, but some ball players have always been willing to risk their health to jack up their performance.

Testosterone itself was isolated and identified in the twenties or thirties (sources disagree) and experiments immediately began to see what it would do for human performance. Countries on both sides during WW2 experimented to see if testosterone injections could enhance the performance of their soldiers. If a lab researcher was refining testosterone for the government, it would have been simple for him or one of his employees to have swiped a little and given it to a ball player. I'd say the odds it happened are almost a certainty; the only debate would be how wide spread the practice was. My guess is that fewer than one percent of professional ball players would have tried it; how much less than one percent is entirely a matter of conjecture. Whether it worked or not, we don't know. Many of the ball players failing steroid tests the past couple of years have been minor leaguers or marginal major leaguers, so we don't know.

By the fifties, synthetic steroids were being manufactured for medicinal purposes and both the Soviets and East Germans were using them extensively to boost performance of their Olympic athletes, especially in their weight lifters. Even the U.S. Olympic Committee briefly promoted steroid use back in the fifties. American weight lifters and body builders began to import synthetic steroids in the late fifties and steroid usage became endemic in the sixties and seventies. Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted using them in the seventies; he was nowhere near the first!

Steroid usage became endemic in football in the seventies and eighties. John Matuzak died in 1987 from heart failure, allegedly from "long use of steroids". Few people remember that Matuzak began his college football career with Missouri, but was kicked off the team as a freshman by Missouri coach, Dan Devine, after he nearly killed a sophomore in a bar brawl, one of the first published incidents of "roid rage". That would have been around 1969, because Matuzak went on to the University of Tampa and was the No. 1 draft pick in 1973.

If weight lifters and body builders began using steroids in the fifties and football players began in the sixties, there were undoubtedly a few baseball players in the sixties and seventies already experimenting with them. Whether that includes Mr. Nolan Ryan, signed by the Mets during Bing Devine's tenure sometime between 1964 and 1967, there is no way for you or me to know. Only Mr. Ryan could answer that question, and we'd have no way of knowing if he was lying or not.

Didnt ever go on 60 minutes to claim he was clean..he was just flat out...freaking NASTY...

That's meaningless! McGwire didn't go on 60 minutes either, but he issued a statement emphatically denying that he'd used steroids when Canseco made his appearance on 60 minutes to say McGwire did. (And Mike Wallace absolutely shredded Canseco's credibility on that issue; we'll see next Sunday if he makes any headway with Clemens.) Many people didn't believe McGwire then and far fewer believed him after he clammed up before Congress. When Clemens gets a subpoena to appear before the next congressional committee investigating steroids, we'll see if he takes the McGwire or the Palmeiro approach.

If he doesnt belong in the Hall of Fame...then neither does Mr. K..(notorious Dodger lefty).

That's about the only thing you've said that I agree with.

[DrungoHazewood]

Strikeouts are great in the context of what the overall results are.

The goal of a pitcher is to get outs and do his part to prevent scoring by allowing walks or hits.

It is ironic that you used Steve Carlton in comparison to Ryan. It doesn't matter that Ryan walked so many more because he allowed far fewer hits.

The career end results were the same :

Ryan career whip = 1.247

Carlton career whip 1.247

Interesting that these two played so many years, so many innings, and ended with an identical WHIP of 1.247

Back to Blyleven- I have always believed that he should be in the HOF. Hopefully this is the year he makes it.

If you want to make the argument that Ryan and Carton were similarly valuable pitchers, you might be right. I haven't looked into that in much depth, but it doesn't appear to be completely off-base.

But the argument we were having was about Ryan being one of the top five or 10 pitchers who ever lived. And neither Carlton nor Ryan were that.

[RShack]

So how is that any different than what I said? Isn't that kinda like a guy who hits 1200 dingers but who can't do anything else besides K and fly out?

A hitter who has 1200 homers and a .200/.220/.500 overall line isn't a great player. He's a bizarre, unique, probably impossible-in-real-life player, but not a great player.

Strikeouts are very, very important. But not to the exclusion of everything else. It's possible to do one thing exceptionally well, but other things poorly enough to greatly reduce your overall value. Kind of like Luis Hernandez and his fielding/hitting. I don't care if he has the range of Mark Belanger mated with Plasticman, he's not going to be a Hall of Famer with a .580 OPS.

Well, I've been hoisted on my own hyperbole-laden petard. (Nobody's fault but mine ;-)

Ryan's record apart from K's is not like a guy with a .220 OBP. Let me say what I meant to say. If you take a hitter who did to HR's what Ryan did to K's, and if that hitter was to BA/OBP what Ryan was to non-K pitching metrics, then everybody would be mooning over the hitter as one of the best sluggers of all time, and maybe *the* best slugger of all time, would they not?

[Boy Howdy]

What I remember about Ryan is that he was perceived a little more than a fastball-ing freak for the most of his career -intimidating but absolutely beatable- until he joined the Texas Rangers at the end of his career.

Something about those last two no-hitters, the Advil ads, putting the K record so far out of reach, and generally raising the bar for aging gracefully on a baseball diamond transformed him into the ultimate American hero.

I was born in 1970. Do other people who were paying attention when he was still active remember it this way? Seems to me nobody ever considered Ryan among the handful of top pitchers when he was active. He's just become a cartoon character of Texas tough and good ol' American endurance.

*******************************************************

OK, 3 more Ryan memories:

1) He was just 10-17 against the Orioles, including 4-10 at Memorial Stadium. They always said Mark Belanger drove him nuts, but I looked it up and The Blade hit just .250 (12-48) against him, albeit with 10 walks for a .367 OBP.

2) Getting Ryan's autograph on his way into Memorial Stadium. About 10 of us were there seeking signatures when he arrived in a cab. "Now y'all form a line, and I'll get to each and every one of you".

3) Putting Robin Ventura in a headlock and pummelling him when Ventura charged the mound.

[DrungoHazewood]

What I remember about Ryan is that he was perceived a little more than a fastball-ing freak for the most of his career -intimidating but absolutely beatable- until he joined the Texas Rangers at the end of his career.

Something about those last two no-hitters, the Advil ads, putting the K record so far out of reach, and generally raising the bar for aging gracefully on a baseball diamond transformed him into the ultimate American hero.

I was born in 1970. Do other people who were paying attention when he was still active remember it this way? Seems to me nobody ever considered Ryan among the handful of top pitchers when he was active. He's just become a cartoon character of Texas tough and good ol' American endurance.

*******************************************************

OK, 3 more Ryan memories:

1) He was just 10-17 against the Orioles, including 4-10 at Memorial Stadium. They always said Mark Belanger drove him nuts, but I looked it up and The Blade hit just .250 (12-48) against him, albeit with 10 walks for a .367 OBP.

2) Getting Ryan's autograph on his way into Memorial Stadium. About 10 of us were there seeking signatures when he arrived in a cab. "Now y'all form a line, and I'll get to each and every one of you".

3) Putting Robin Ventura in a headlock and pummelling him when Ventura charged the mound.

I was born in 1971 and I clearly remember him being something of a larger-than-life guy when he was with the Astros.

But I also remember people saying he clearly took a step forward towards the end of his career when he lost a few mph off his fastball. He got much better command and started using many more secondary pitches and was a better overall pitcher. The unstated assumption was that before then he was pretty good because of his stuff but really wasn't polished at all.

[Frobby]

I think what Ryan did in his 40's is what turned him from fireballing freak show to legend. The guy won 71 games and struck out 1,437 batters after turning 40.

[mweb]

Well, I've been hoisted on my own hyperbole-laden petard. (Nobody's fault but mine ;-)

Ryan's record apart from K's is not like a guy with a .220 OBP. Let me say what I meant to say. If you take a hitter who did to HR's what Ryan did to K's, and if that hitter was to BA/OBP what Ryan was to non-K pitching metrics, then everybody would be mooning over the hitter as one of the best sluggers of all time, and maybe *the* best slugger of all time, would they not?

Yeah, probably, but most think the Ryan is one of the best pitchers of all time. Hitting a hr is also much much more important to a game than striking a batter out. Plus, the K's, along with durability are the reasons he was above average, or even average. So I think Drungo's example of a .220 OBP hitter is pretty solid.