Quote:
Originally Posted by rats60
We must not have been watching the same World Series. I never knew that Clayton Kershaw walking Marwin Gonzalez and Evan Gattis to get to a weaker hitter and the third out was a bad thing. I watch a lot of Baseball and I see pitchers pitch around good hitters or walk guys to set up a double play all the time. That is how I was taught to play the game, who knew we were all wrong?
I always thought the pitcher's job was to prevent runs. Isn't the winner of the game the one that scores the most runs and not the one that gets the most base runners. Nolan Ryan had a career ERA of 3.19 over 5386 innings. I don't see how anyone could rate another pitcher above him when they have a much higher ERA in a lot fewer innings.
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Indeed, we know a lot more today about what we were wrong about back then. That was the whole point of Moneyball and the reason the people whose liveihood depends on it now use more sophisticated analyses of their baseball stats.
It's not worth while to respond to a straw man argument equating a lack of control with an intentional walk that happens to work out as planned.
If you just want to use ERA though, you're going to have to distract everyone from the fact that there have been hundreds of pitchers with better ERAs than Ryan. Feel free to throw out guys with fewer than 10 seasons or whatever, but he's nowhere near the top. I think we can agree that adjusted ERA+ provides a more suitable comparison for pitchers from different eras. In any case, we should, as it's more predictive of wins and losses. Halladay ranks #37. Ryan ranks #277.
I take it as a sign of respect for the game and its players that, when one of our favorite players passes away, we do what baseball fans do and engage in passionate discussions of why Wagner was better than Cobb or why Ruth was better than Mays or why Halladay was better than Ryan. If you show up at his funeral to tell his widow that Nolan Ryan was better that's disrespectful (in addition to being patently false). I don't think in a forum such as this at a time such as this we ought to limit ourselves to speaking in platitudes, though Halladay certainly deserves the platitudiest platitudes we can plate. And I'll be happy to drink to his memory with anyone who would care to join me.