Pettitte vs. Halladay vs. Ryan
 

Here you go. Have at it.


My 2 cents...

Pettitte doesn't hold a flame to the other 2. His legacy will always be tainted by his PED usage, and his W/L record was inflated by the teams he played on. He posted a 4+ ERA in 9 of his 18 seasons. He posted above a 3.50 ERA in an additional 4 seasons.

By comparison, Halladay only posted a 3.50+ ERA 6 times, 2 of which were anomalies in 2000 (10.64; also only his 2nd full season in the big leagues) and 2013 (6.82; his last season).

Ryan is an entirely different animal, holding records that will probably never be broken.

Halladay was one of the best pitchers I've ever seen.

He's the best of the three anyway, but also Halladay (unlike the others) probably didn't use PEDs.

It's circumstantial, sure, but there's no one in all of baseball (including even Barry Bonds) whose career is more suspicious just on the basis of his statistics. There are plenty of ways of presenting it, but I think this is my favorite.

Nolan Ryan led the league in strikeouts many times, as follows.
Ages 25-32: 7 times
Ages 33-39: 0 times
Ages 40-43: 4 times

He also ranks 308th in career K/BB ratio, but that's a separate issue. Halladay is 24th. Pettite is 166th.

Ages 33-39 were all with the Astros. They limited his pitch-count significantly after signing him (far fewer complete games as a result) and you can see that he made a monumental effort in reducing the number of walks issued during that time. This also impacted his K numbers. His K/BB was actually better over that period.

To insinuate that PEDs were involved late in his career is just flat out wrong.

I don't think either Pettitte or Haladay deserve to be in the HOF. Both guys were great but not HOF great. Halladay had a couple great years, so did a lot of guys not in the hall. Pettitte was my favorite lefty to watch pith and had a very good career, not a HOF career.

Nolan Ryan was interesting at best. If you like strike outs and walks he is the man. He had some amazing games but also is the career leader in walks and hits per 9 innings. That is right nobody gave up more hits per game than good old Nolan, he led the league 12 years. I am also sure Jose, Juan, and Ivan would all say he was PED free while teammates.:D

EDIT: I read the hits per 9 innings wrong and Nolan led the league in giving up the least 12 times. Still not a fan of Mr Ryan.

Nolan Ryan
 

It's easy to focus on one stat. Have you looked at the other important statistic that goes into calculation of WHIP...you know, the one that starts with "H". If I'm reading correctly, Nolan Ryan is #1 ALL-TIME in lowest Hits per 9 innings, ahead of everyone's favorite modern player, Clayton Kershaw!

End of argument!

I wish you the best of luck with that proclamation.

Being the best pitcher you ever saw on a particular day is one thing but doesnt mean anything when looking at a career.

Petitte had 2 more seasons to put up bad seasons versus Roy yet Roy still had the worst two seasons between the two pitchers. The 10.64 era was in 13 starts and he was sent down to the minors. I would think if someone saw him pitch one of those games that year they would say he was the worst pitcher they have ever seen.

Again, that wouldnt mean anything in regards to what kind of pitcher he was in his career. Just to say he was the best/worst pitcher ever seen doesnt mean much unless you watched all of their starts etc. Perhaps you did.

There are lots of pitchers on great teams that dont win. You cant punish him for winning.

Nolan Ryan won over 300 games and is in the HOF.....counting stats mater. There are plenty of pitchers in the HOF that if you took away 50 wins (pretend they were on bad teams so lost out all those wins) they arent in the HOF....wins matter...and Roy only has 203 of them with little postseason record to look at to address that deficiency.

I'm not even sure now if we agree on what we're trying to assess here. I think what most of us are trying to get at is not just how many games did a given pitcher win (which we can all agree correlates positively with how good a pitcher he was but not so strongly that it can't be easily improved upon as an analytic tool), but how many games (A) did his team win compared to (B) how many they would have won without him.

I haven't actually done this, but couldn't we just look at each of their teams' winning percentages in the games he didn't appear in and compare that to their winning percentage in the games he started to get a pretty good measure of his particular contribution to his career win total? That is, a better measure than just his career W.

The peak vs. longevity argument is just a matter of opinion. I say Niekro was better than Koufax, but I recognize that most people don't share that opinion.

The simplest statistic I calculate to rank players is something I call "Simlab" on my spreadsheets and is an exponential function of WAR and Games that's calibrated to penalize a player either for having a short career or for hanging around past his prime. Albert Pujols for example dropped from #28 to #38 in the past year. It's better than WAR, and it's also better than WAR7, and I daresay it's an improvement on JAWS (which it's fairly close to conceptually but more elegant than just averaging two numbers).

It gives me:
1) Babe Ruth
2) Walter Johnson
3) Cy Young
4) Barry Bonds
5) Roger Clemens
6) Willie Mays
7) Ty Cobb
8) Rogers Hornsby
9) Ted Williams
10) Kid Nichols

as having had the best MLB statistics and also puts Halladay's rank well ahead of Ryan who is, in turn, well ahead of Pettite.

In my PPIBTH algorithm I have Pettite 5 steps ahead of Roy which is 2 x a two step plus 1.

Someone brought up the fact only a few HOFs ERA are over 3.6 etc. I am not sure what an accepted reduction in ERA for AL pitchers is allowed when comparing them to career NL counterparts or pre 1973 seasons for HOFs. I would imagine over a 18 year career your ERA would be .3 less. Andy did really well in his brief time with the Astros for example era wise i believe, but havent checked it out.

My algorithm may be a bit biased as it stands for 'Prove Pettite is better than Halladay' so there may be some markers in there that are slightly tainted.

Nolan Ryan 6th in career fWAR among pitchers with 107.2 ... SIXTH! with a career ERA of 3.19, career FIP of 2.97 and 9.55 K/9 inn



Petite- 30th in career fWAR with 68.9, ERA of 3.85, FIP of 3.74 K/9 of 6.64




Halladay- 38th in career fWAR with 65.2, ERA of 3.38 FIP of 3.39 K/9 of 6.93



It's pretty obvious who the best pitcher is