Quote:
Originally Posted by darwinbulldog
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.
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We will just have to agree to disagree because I pretty much disagree with everything you have posted. ERA+ is not a good measure to compare Halladay and Ryan. They really weren't from different eras. If you were comparing a modern pitcher to Cy Young that would be different eras. ERAs from Halladay's years in the league were a product of bad pitching in my opinion. Yet, Clayton Kershaw has been able to put up a 2.36 career ERA.
You only want to look a raw numbers and ignore the context of them. You want to ignore proven strategy that is still used today by throwing out "stawman" which doesn't apply. Ryan was the better pitcher. He was more productive (by preventing runs) over a longer period (innings pitched). That doesn't take away from Halladay's greatness. That won't keep Halladay from the HOF. It doesn't mean that there weren't better pitchers than Nolan Ryan, just not Roy Halladay.