Nice article, Graham, but I have one question. Has anyone come up with a spraychart of hits against Ryan? Did most of his flies go to CF or would batters pull him?

My favorite player ever. I had a bunch of Ryan posters on my wall when I was a kid. I patterned my delivery after him. Before my growth spurt ended in my mid teens I thought would be him. Stopped growing, and so did my fastball, so I never went anywhere. Still, I named my first son Ryan after him.

The story of Ryan’s rise to greatness is well-told, detailing how he debuted as a wild young reliever with the New York Mets in 1967

Minor (ever-so-minor) quibble: Ryan debuted for the Mets in 1966 (where he pitched in two games, one as a starter). Ryan did not play in the majors in 1967. When he returned to the Mets in 1968, he pitched in twenty-one games, eighteen as a starter.

DB

My favorite player ever.

Mine too, or close too it.
Part of my reason for picking the Astros as my First Favorite Team was that they'd just signed him - I already knew he was great from the Angels (Sports Illustrated had a long feature on his fourth no-hitter), but once he got signed to the nearest team geographically, which was also a fun team to watch at the time, that made it easy. I remember cracking up when he hit his One Career Homer, and throwing my bike down and running and yelling at my brother to "Shut UP!" when I heard him trying to get me to look at the TV because Ryan was "throwing a no-hitter!" I didn't want to jinx it.
I went to see him every time I could in SF, when the Astros played the Giants. I remember going down by the bullpen and getting as close as I could to the catcher. I just wanted to see what it looked like to try to hit (or catch) the Hardest-Throwing Pitcher In the World.

Ryan could be the Bob Feller of the National League.

I think that's exactly right. Put him in the Cy Young Era and he's basically Cy Young.
Put him in the Walter Johnson Era and he's basically Walter Johnson.
Warren Spahn Era, and he's Warren Spahn.
He wasn't as good as any of those guys (though I'd take his career over Feller's). But he threw really hard, and got guys out effectively, for a LONG time.

Find Ryan a similar formative environment; or, place him in a free-swinging era where batters walked far less, where the few Hall of Fame pitchers were either fireballers or on great teams or both. I’m speaking of the 1930s. Playing then, on a ball club like the New York Giants, Ryan may have excelled.



If you can't find the strikezone would they still swing anyway?


Warren Spahn Era, and he's Warren Spahn.

For a good chunk of Spahn's career he was Tom Glavine.

Per BB-Ref's Neutralization Toy, Ryan's career as played with the 1930 Philadelphia Phillies:
217-265, 6.05 ERA, 4445 IP, 4836 H, 395 HR, 3455 BB, 4713 K.

So he's still #2 in career strikeouts, and would've been #1 for decades before Randy Johnson finally passed him.
I wonder if that guy still gets into the Hall of Fame, and how his career affects people's perception of W-L record, ERA, and strikeouts (and Hall of Fame "standards").

EDIT: "For a good chunk of Spahn's career he was Tom Glavine."
I think that's about right. I was surprised to discover, listening to the '48 World Series broadcast, that Spahn was a hard thrower, at least early on.
I was not surprised at all that he worked so quickly it was notable even by 1948 standards.

The Ryan Express has a reputation as one of the best pitchers in baseball history, though some of his success may have been due to luck — good home ballparks, a .269 opponents’ batting average on balls in play, and the fortune to play in an era that mostly favored pitchers

Two out of three of those conditions could be considered "luck" in terms of when he was born and where he got to play. But can the .269 BABIP be considered luck when it occurred over so many innings ? I personally don't think so. BABIP was lower through much of his era than it is now, right ? So the "gap" between league avg and his BABIP is not as great as it seems anyway.

Here is LIST of pitchers from 1968-1993 minimum 2000 IP, sorted by BABIP. Plenty of guys lower than Ryan too.

Me to Jim McAndrew 68/69 at Shea Stadium...

Me: "You throw harder than Nolan Ryan!"

McAndrew: "Uhh, no."

Me: "Yes, you do!"

McAndrew: (walks away)

Nolan striking out Frank Robinson in the 1969 Series is as awesome an example of young heat overpowering an established superstar as you will ever see. Blows Welch vs. Jackson to hell.

I'm not sure I agree with the logic. Ryan's low BABIP has been noted and that would come in quite handy in the 30s. But he also had a quite low HR/9 rate. Some of that is ballpark but most not, so why does Ryan need to be in a huge ballpark? Using the same criteria as the above list (68-93, at least 2000 IP), Ryan has the 4th best HR/9 rate at .54. Hershiser, Gooden and Steve Rogers (.48) are better.

True, the saber theory of relativity says Ryan would pitch the same after adjusting for park and era effects but that would make this whole series moot so bear with me. :-) Seems to me that Ryan's greatest relative effect would have been to move him into a good hitter's park and, yes, during an era where hitters dominated (so Graham's got the first part right). Then the fact that he was possibly the hardest pitcher to _hit_ in history (all-time leader in fewest H/9 given all those BnIP) and one of the hardest ones to homer off of in his era suggests that putting him in a pitcher's park is a bit of a waste. Put him in a park where even good pitchers get hit (Coors, Wrigley, Baker Bowl) and he'd still be the one that wouldn't be hit and his ERA+ (but not his ERA) would dramatically improve.

Or not due to the saber theory of relativity.

Let's seem him pitch until he is 46 in the 1920's, 30's, and 40's. Hell, let's see him get out of his 20's back then. It wasn't like Nolan never got hurt or suffered a serious injury to his arm that required surgery.

Nolan and Feller seem to me to be almost the same type pitcher. Feller had better peripherals, was a better athlete, fielder, etc. Ryan lasted much longer, but Feller's 4-year layoff and coming back to pitcher 370 innings and 36 complete games in '46 might have had something to do with that--and even before that, Feller was pitched a whole lot. If the same thing had happened now, and he had been away from the game for a long time, Feller would have been babied more when he came back.

The similar sort of pitcher they were, though, it would seem that Feller was fortunate in that the times he pitched in the walks he gave up did not result in people stealing bases to the extent they did for Ryan--but I don't know for sure, having not run the numbers.

I think #10 is exactly right. I thought Ryan's W/L record was hurt by the Astrodome because he had so many close low scoring games where luck is more of a factor. Give him a higher scoring environment where dominant talent can dominate and you can pad his win totals.

At the batting cage I hit at as a kid, my proudest moment was when I dominated the intermediate speed pitches enough that my dad let me hit "Nolan Ryan", a machine I'm sure only threw in the high 70s, but seemed like 100 mph to a 12 year old.

Era he might have thrived in: National League, 1881-1888

Why: Before the rule change of 1889 which established the four-ball walk, the number of balls required for a walk varied between five and nine.

Plus he wasn't 60'6" away from the plate.

I don't think you need to limit it to the 1880s. From 1871 through at least 1893, there was, according to George Wright, who ought to know, an unwritten rule that hitters should swing at pitches and put them in play, and there was no enforced rule regarding where you could stride to get to that pitch. If you wanted to take a step into the opposite side batter's box to get at the pitch, that was fine. Well, Ryan threw extremely hard, but was wild. Under the above conditions, the hitters will just step in the direction his wild pitch has gone and try to hit it, which they won't be able to.

I also think that Ryan is a LOT more like Spahn than like Feller, although I imagine most baseball historians will disagree. The feature that unites Ryan and Spahn is low workloads when very young. Ryan didn't pitch a lot of innings at the beginning of his career, because he couldn't find the strike zone. Spahn got low workloads because he was drafted into WWII after his rookie season. Both pitchers were able to throw hard and well until they were quite old. Feller hit the bigs at age 17, and got full starter workloads from then on. He didn't last as long. Yes, his radar gun readings would be closer to Ryans' than Spahn's would be, but the career path for all three is really determined by how they were used when young.

- Brock Hanke

Ryan didn't pitch a lot of innings at the beginning of his career, because he couldn't find the strike zone.<i>

There were at least three other factors. One is that Ryan had military obligations that broke up his routine in some ways. Two - and I think this is a fairly important one - is that Ryan had persistent blister problems, and left a number of games early because of that. They were trying all sorts of home remedies on him. Eventually, he outgrew this. His skin toughened up on its own, or something. And then there's the third item: the Mets had Seaver, and they had Koosman. Sure, there were many other innings that need to be pitched, but they certainly weren't looking to Ryan to be their ace. They didn't really need him all that badly.

I find it hard to move Ryan in time. He came up during the brief heyday of the four man rotation and got in on the early days of the DH. His ability to carry an extremely heavy inning load peaked at precisely the time when extremely heavy inning loads were in fashion. Then, the 5 man rotation and the decline of the complete game started limiting innings, just when an aging Ryan was in position to benefit from those restrictions on his workload.

<i>Put him in the Cy Young Era and he's basically Cy Young.
Put him in the Walter Johnson Era and he's basically Walter Johnson.
Warren Spahn Era, and he's Warren Spahn.

I find all of those jarring and disorienting. Cy Young made a living throwing strikes; it's hard for me to think of that at the same time I think of Ryan. And Ryan was never anywhere close to good enough to be legitimately compared to Young or Johnson - or really, even Spahn.

I do see the comparison to Feller, and if you go way back in time, to Amos Rusie. But Feller and Rusie were both child prodigies: major league stars as teenagers. Rusie's arm did burn up. Feller pitched his best early in his career, got some circumstance-enforced arm rest during WWII, then came back to have a long career afterwards. Ryan was not a teenage star,and was well into his mid 20's before he really became the Ryan we remember.

That's why I stated that Ryan and Feller were the same "type". The context in which the two pitched was sufficiently different to play a part in Ryan not being seen as the quality pitcher Feller was. Their careers are very different in length and concentrated workload, as is pointed out. Feller pitched a ton of innings when he was young, then had his prime splintered in a major way, then came back and the powers that be (Veeck, I believe) immediately began having him pitch a ton of innings again "right off the bat." The Indians had a genuine drawing card (Feller was just as big as DiMaggio and Williams from the late '30s through the '40s, and they milked it hot and heavy with no thought of tomorrow when it came to what was good for him.

Feller got to be used (or overused) young twice.

The Ryan "type" would be someone who gave up a lot of walks, struck out a lot of batters, and gave up very few hits – and Ryan was more extreme than anyone else ever on all three counts, so there's not going to be anyone really close to him.

Feller is certainly similar. Others in the general vicinity would be Johnny VanderMeer, Allie Reynolds, Whitey Ford, Toothpick Sam Jones, Sam McDowell, David Cone, and Randy Johnson. Given that none of them are terribly like Ryan, they at least form a kind of pitching "family" in the old James/Neyer definition.

It's difficult for a guy like that to have a long career, and what often happens is that they miss stretches, reinvent themselves as a slower pitcher, or just implode at some point. What distinguishes Ryan is that he never really changed – except, as I so often point out, in his final seasons in Houston and Arlington, when he found very decent control and lost no velocity. But that's a small fraction of his career.

Ryan was a guy who hated to "give in". He nibbled. As a result, he walked a bunch of guys, but when he was "on"...hoo boy. Hence, the 7 no hitters.

Bill James has this in one of his Abstracts or books.

James was responsible for taking Ryan's legacy down a peg in that Abstract. He criticized Ryan for not giving in, and deconstructed most of Ryan's achievements, similar to how James went after Koufax with era and park effects.

Well, Ryan threw extremely hard, but was wild. Under the above conditions, the hitters will just step in the direction his wild pitch has gone and try to hit it, which they won't be able to.

I have seen old footage from I think 1905 where the Giants (?) are doing this but dont you think it would be terribly difficult to do that on Nolan Ryan? How would you even have time to react like that? I would have to guess that they just didnt throw it that hard. That and I think what I was watching was BP before the game...

Anyhow, I think in the old days a lot of guys were influenced by Ty Cobb who had taught people to actually do this, i.e. step out or step across in order to adjust to different pitches. My dad actually taught me this, until
I read Ted Williams's book who taught to start the step just BEFORE the pitch is released. It makes a hell of a lot of difference. Later on, I found Cobb's book or someone mentioned it or something and I could see that his theory was where my dad got that crazy idea...

I've seen interviews where Mike Schmidt said the toughest pitch for him to hit was Nolan Ryan's fastball.

Schmidt also said the 2nd toughest pitch for him to hit was...Nolan Ryan's curve.

As a former Angels season ticket holder I saw a ton of Ryan's games back in the '70s, and on the occasions I was lucky enough to sit behind home plate, I could really see the magic at work (or "hear" the magic on some fastballs).

It was obvious at that time that the curve was the main issue. Sometimes he just couldn't get it over the plate consistently and batters would sit back and wait for the heat with hitter's counts. Even when a pitcher is cranking 100 mph, if the hitter is looking for it on a 2-0 count there's going to be some damage.

On the other hand - on the days Nolan could catch the corners with the hook - oh, my (as Dick Enberg would say!)- he was simply untouchable. That was the thing that was so much fun about watching Nolan - there was always an electricity in the air that made you feel like you were watching history unfold right before your eyes!

As Bill James documented in the Abstracts - teams like KC that were known to have some hackers in the lineup tended to struggle against Nolan whereas teams like Baltimore that were known to have some more patient hitters tended to get better results. If you only get 3 walks per 9 innings against Nolan you won't be very successful but if you can get that up to 6 or 7 walks you'll get some runs.

Finally - one of the great joys of my life was being able to take my dad to the '89 AllStar Game in Anaheim which was Nolan's homecoming after all those years in Houston. To have him get the win in the AS Game (and especially to watch him strike out Kevin Mitchell on a changeup!)was incredible!

"I remember cracking up when he hit his One Career Homer"

Ryan actually had two career homers, one off a HOFer.

Has Ryan thrown the most pitches ever in MLB history? Just looking at the minimum pitches he must have thrown from IP, BB, and SO, it looks like he has more than Cy Young and Walter Johnson and contemporaries such as Sutton and Niekro by a good bit.

From 10 years ago,

He threw 5386 innings. Plus he has walked the most players ever and struck out the most. So right there he is guaranteed to have thrown at least 28,322 pitches. Plus factor in that he allowed 3923 hits and 158 Hit batsmen and you are up 32,403.
Cy Young threw 7354.7 innings. His bare minimum walk and strike out total is 13,277. With hits and HB the minimum is 20,532.
I'm thinking maybe Nolan Ryan has thrown the most pitches ever in MLB history. Cy Young threw 2000 more innings but the way the game was played back then was different. There was not a lot of strikeouts as there is now and there were slightly less walks per game than now a days. A lot more balls were being put into play back then, plus when players did get on base they ran a lot more than they do nowadays. Consider this the 8 team AL playing a shorter schedule has almost the same amount (and in some cases more) of stolen bases as the newer 14 team AL playing 162 games. So while they were stealing more they were also probably getting caught more which probably decreased his amount of pitches.
Nolan Ryan has the lowest ratio of hits per nine innings in the history of the game, which helps and hurts him. But I think in this case it helps him. For starters he was allowing 4.5 walks per 9 innings which is very high for players plus he averaged plus he was averaging 9.5 strikeouts per nine. Two things that both require a high amount of pitches.

Bottomline is this. Cy Young might be the leader in this category but I would not be surprised at all to see Nolan Ryan at the top of this list.

Here is a formula for you. Take the amount of batters faced by Nolan Ryan and multiply by 4 and see what you get. Then multiply Cy Youngs battter faced by 3 and see what you get.

Why 3 and 4? Because I checked some modern players that have there pitch count tracked and I found that Greg Maddux as average 3.3 pitchs per batter and Bobby Witt has averaged 3.8. Greg Maddux is probably the closest to similarity I could find to Cy Young in the middle of the night and without being paid for it while Bobby Witt is similar to Nolan Ryan in terms of Ratios.

By using the two modern players pitches totals we have accounted for foul balls which get counted in there totals.

Though one problem is that for Cy Youngs first 3 seasons a foul bunt wasn't charged a strike, and it wasn't until 1901 that a foul ball was called a stike. Though a foul tip was called a strike since 1895.

Baseball Prospectus ran a story today about pitches thrown and a estimator they came up with.

Here is the formula:
Implied pitch count (IPC) = (3.17 * BFP) + (3.44 * BB) + (1.53 * K)


Based on this Formula here are Cy Youngs and Nolan Ryans numbers:
Nolan Ryan total pitch count: 89,920
CY Young total pitch count: 103,789
Well over 10,000 pitch lead. Interesting enough they ran the numbers for Cy Young and came up with a number around 99,000. The reason for the difference is they are using Batters Faced numbers that are lower than Retrosheets. Also while they didn't include it in the formula they said that groundball pictures have lower pitch totals than flyball pitchers. So the formula probably overestimates Cy Youngs numbers by a good deal. If we lower Cy's totals by 10% to try and figure out a more accurate number we come up with 93,383 total pitches or if we use Baseball Prospectus numbers we get 88,987 total pitches or a little under 1000 less pitches than Nolan.

The IPC gives Ryan 3.98 pitches per batter and Cy Young 3.45. If we adjust Cy's pitches per by 10% we get 3.1. Kind of spooky for me that my rough estimates on pitches per were pretty accurate. Earlier I had estimated that Nolan threw 4 pitches per batter and Cy Young had thrown 3 pitches per.

Something I should note I originally used Greg Maddux for comparison to find total pitches per. Well I found Greg's real total and it is 3.32 pitches per batter not 3.4 that I had earlier used. Also if we assume that the two pitches are similar in terms of walks and hits allowed than I should point out that IPC routinely overestimates MAddux total pitches thrown. For his career it has overestimated by 8% and his last two years number are off by 9 and 10%.

From an August 2004 Hardball Times article: What Pitch Counts Hath Wrought.

Let's compare these totals to those of some past greats:
Nolan Ryan 90,211
Steve Carlton 83,355
Gaylord Perry 82,147
Don Sutton 80,526
Warren Spahn 79,613
Bert Blyleven 77,310
Tom Seaver 73,560
Tommy John 72,708
Early Wynn 72,607
Robin Roberts 70,037
Jim Kaat 69,743
Red Ruffing 68,599
Ferguson Jenkins 68,494
Frank Tanana 65,931
Ted Lyons 63,783
Bobo Newsom 62,303
Bob Feller 62,255
Dennis Martinez 62,091
Lefty Grove 61,642
Bob Gibson 61,301
Jack Morris 60,991
Jim Palmer 60,666
Jerry Koosman 60,425
Jim Bunning 58,338
Mickey Lolich 57,420

Special knuckleballer category:
Phil Niekro 85,110
Charlie Hough 61,166

Just for the hell of it, some deadballers:
Cy Young 107,114
Walter Johnson 87,528
Pete Alexander 75,973
Christy Mathewson 69,644

Here is the Hardball Times link

Ryan actually had two career homers, one off a HOFer.

Right, this was the first one - I feel like I remember this being a crazy early-season "Game of the Week" that just got crazier and crazier.
An unfortunate sort of season-in-microcosm for the 'Stros.

#21 No idea what comment or analysis you're talking about. James has him at #24 (higher than he'll rank in most methods, because win shares values playing time more highly than just about any metric) in the New HBA and nothing negative to say about Ryan (beyond the fact that other sabrmetricians don't rank him highly)

The comment in the NHBA notes that Ryan's walks (the most obvious problem) could be taken with a positive spin (never gives in) or as a negative (you can have a walk any time you want) And that sportswriters generally opted for the former because of the way the players regarded Ryan. He takes no position on this.

He did point out that many of the things that were said about Ryan (his attendance boost for instance) are provably wrong.

James was the first to note that Ryan was unusually easy to run on (because he was the first to gather this data for all pitchers) and that he got unusually poor DP support (ditto). Others noted that he gave up a relatively high number of his hits with runners on base. Everybody knew he had a lot of passed balls and wild pitches. It was Pete Palmer who first put all this together and noted that Ryan gave up far more runs than predicted by his counter stats -- in fact he was the worst that Palmer could find in terms of absolute number of "extra" runs allowed.

And permit me to doubt that Ryan would have been awesome in the early days. We have no idea if he could throw really hard underhanded.

some of his success may have been due to luck — good home ballparks, a .269 opponents’ batting average on balls in play

Ryan derived a smaller home-field advantage than the other Houston starters of his era. Also, I think it's safe to assume that a guy with literally unhittable stuff might have made some non-luck contributions to his good BABIP.

FWIW, during Ryan's Angels career, which was his peak, he had the decided *bad* luck of having absolutely awful bullpens behind him, and frequently some pretty bad defenses as well.