Judging by wins and losses

[Ennder]

The best team is not the one that wins the championship.

 

If you disagree with this statement then we probably will never agree on how important W/L is as a stat.

 

Wins are a result, they are a terrible judge of anything though.

[Thurston Fluff]

Yeah, Ryan refused to pitch to contact, which is why he had a ton of walks and losses as well. I actually think he's pretty overrated in general.

 

I just looked at his career stats and don't really buy this. He usually logged 200 or more innings with and ERA under 3.80. The only times his ERA was over that was his rookie year and his last year. He had several seasons with more than 300 IP and an ERA well under 4 many times under 3. If a pitcher logged the innings and gave up that few runs it's hard to say he would have win more games pitching to contact.

Some of his seasons include a 8-16, 2.76 ERA, 211 IP season - 11-10, 3.35 ERA, 233 IP - 10-13, 3.72 234 IP. Hard to see those type of numbers being a product of not pitching to contact. Easy to see them when you realize he played on some very offensively challenged teams in those years.

[logan82]

Backupcatchers wrote:

I just looked at his career stats and don't really buy this. He usually logged 200 or more innings with and ERA under 3.80.

What was a typical ERA during that time? I am just wondering since it seemed to be an era where pitchers had an advantage.

[RU Rah Rah]

What was a typical ERA during that time? I am just wondering since it seemed to be an era where pitchers had an advantage.

Career ERA+ was 111, good for a tie for 285th all-time.

He also is #1 in walks -- by almost a thousand (!) over #2, Steve Carlton. In fairness, he's also #1 in K's. So his K/BB ratio was 2.040, good enough for 230th all-time.

 

 

 

[Thurston Fluff]

What was a typical ERA during that time? I am just wondering since it seemed to be an era where pitchers had an advantage.

 

Good question I'm not sure. It'd be cool if anyone had league averages for different eras to share. His career WHIP was 1.247. He gave up 3923 hits in 5386 innings and walked about one hitter every 2.1 innings if that helps judge his true worth.

 

Keep in mind he did pitch in 4 different decades. essentially form 68 - 93 (he played 2 games in 66) so I don't even know how to judge him considering the changes that went on with pitching through his career.

[owbc]

If things really even out, the Brewers should be expected to start losing a bunch of one run games and finish with around a .500 or worse record in one run games and overall. I don't think that is the case. We should be expected to be close to .500 in whatever remaining 1 run games we encounter.

That's a good point. Our current W/L record shouldn't tell us anything about the future. If we got lucky, that's great, but in the long run, we are likely to play at our talent level. That's also a good argument for the Cubs to win the Central this year. Even though they played insanely well early in the season, one would expect that they would continue to play over .500 ball.

 

However, that doesn't take injuries or SOS into consideration. You could possibly throw home/road splits into there, but I imagine that will start to even itself out as well.

[TooLiveBrew]

It'd be cool if anyone had league averages for different eras to share.

 

ERA+... adjusted to compare over ballparks & eras. 100 is considered league-avg., no matter the era.

[Fatter than Joey]

I just looked at his career stats and don't really buy this. He usually logged 200 or more innings with and ERA under 3.80.

 

A 3.80 ERA was nothing special back in the 1970s-80s, if you look at his ERA+ it is right around, and even below 100 in some years.

 

Ryan benefited from playing in the Astrodome, where nobody hit HRs. Jose Cruz led the Astros in HRs, in 1979 with 9. The Astros hit 15 HRs at home in 1979 -- Opponents hit about 30.

 

Ryan was hardly ever the best pitcher on his team. In NY, Koos and Seaver were better, Tanana was a better pitcher with the Angels, and JR Richard & Mike Scott were better during Ryans stay in Houston.

 

Ryan's longevity was incredible.

[Thurston Fluff]

Ryan benefited from playing in the Astrodome, where nobody hit HRs. Jose Cruz led the Astros in HRs, in 1979 with 9. The Astros hit 15 HRs at home in 1979 -- Opponents hit about 30.

 

This hurts as much as helps. His team didn't score very many run at home or on the road.

 

Regardless of his era the innings he pitched should have been good enough to allow him to win more games simply by sticking around long enough for his team to score some runs. But I'm not sure his innings pitched would be useful without knowing the average IP of the era he pitched in. In all he's kind of unusual because he pitched so long during time where the pitching use changed so much he really ended up pitching in tow very different eras for a fairly long period of time in each. I don't know of many pitchers who did so in the complete game era and the specialist era. I wouldn't put him as the greatest or even top ten but he deserved his hall of fame induction.

 

ERA+... adjusted to compare over ballparks & eras. 100 is considered league-avg., no matter the era.

 

I was looking more for things like WHIP and inning pitched type stuff. The ERA is one good measure but for the purpose of determining if he had pitched to contact more he'd have been better served I'd think K:BB, BB/innings pitched and Whip would be more useful. I know I'm the one who brought ERA up but probably wasn't the best argument I've ever put forward.