Most undervalued HOFers

[BillyCoxDodgers3B]

Unique? Yes. Seven no hitters and all-time K record? Sorry, that equates to greatness. No amount of stats or words will change that.

Yes, there are other pitchers who are great for different reasons than why Ryan was legendary.

[Peter_Spaeth]

I guess I just don't understand why it's meaningful to measure a pitcher in this way. A decent pitcher would probably improve a terrible team's winning percentage more than a great pitcher would improve a great team's percentage. For example. And I would bet there are all sorts of confounding variables too.

[BillyCoxDodgers3B]

Yes! Ultimately, everyone wants the win, but it's certainly not solely on the shoulders of any one player to achieve that. The pitcher may get credit for the decision, but there are lots of other players and factors that determine the outcome. Therefore, I will never solely be transfixed with W-L.

Every manager wants strikeouts from his pitchers. While there are other obvious requests, "Get that guy out" has to be the big one.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by BillyCoxDodgers3B

Yes! Ultimately, everyone wants the win, but it's certainly not solely on the shoulders of any one player to achieve that. The pitcher may get credit for the decision, but there are lots of other players and factors that determine the outcome. Therefore, I will never solely be transfixed with W-L.

Every manager wants strikeouts from his pitchers. While there are other obvious requests, "Get that guy out" has to be the big one.

Yep. A win or a loss depend half on how good the pitcher was, half on how much run support he got. Thus, people win Cy Youngs with mediocre W-L records. IIRC Ryan himself had a season where he lost twice as many as he won, but led the league in ERA.

[robw1959]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Yep. A win or a loss depend half on how good the pitcher was, half on how much run support he got. Thus, people win Cy Youngs with mediocre W-L records. IIRC Ryan himself had a season where he lost twice as many as he won, but led the league in ERA.

Maybe the pitching factor is only one-third of a team's success; the other two-thirds being hitting and defense. Defense is a very underrated factor of success in baseball.

[Kutcher55]

Wasn't Gaylord Perry a blatant cheater who once got caught with a tub of vaseline inside his baseball cap? And you're comparing him to the Ryan express? Guy, guy, c'mon guy.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Kutcher55

Wasn't Gaylord Perry a blatant cheater who once got caught with a tub of vaseline inside his baseball cap? And you're comparing him to the Ryan express? Guy, guy, c'mon guy.

This is a perfect example, guy. I said that Perry and Ryan are "pretty similar" in regards to their career values. Let's see.

Ryan: 324-292, 112 ERA+, 5,386 IP, 1.247 WHIP, 83.6 WAR

Perry: 314-265, 117 ERA+, 5,350 IP, 1.181 WHIP, 90.0 WAR

Well, looks like they are, in fact, pretty similar in regards to their actual career values.

They produced similar careers and values, but Ryan had the highlight reel, the press, the flashy K's (and forgotten walks) and the dedicated fanbase while Perry did not. I understand that many people are not interested in using the math or value or anything like that, and follow an emotion or who they like or who had the PR, or the highlight reel, or single game accomplishments. I do not understand why many of these people object that other people use math to evaluate instead.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by BillyCoxDodgers3B

Unique? Yes. Seven no hitters and all-time K record? Sorry, that equates to greatness. No amount of stats or words will change that.

Yes, there are other pitchers who are great for different reasons than why Ryan was legendary.

It's individual greatness. Which is fine; my contention with the Ryan worship is how so many people want to ignore wins, winning percentage, ERA, WHIP, FIP, and virtually every other pitching statistic at which his contemporaries (Seaver, Palmer, et al.) almost ALL were better at than Ryan. It's just ignoring a large part of what people think pitching is.