Top 20 pitchers of all time?

Cricket bowlers, dead-ball pitchers and modern pitchers all throw balls for a living trying to get guys with sticks out. So they are all pretty similar.

Dead-ball pitchers made a living lobbing fastballs down the middle. They had balls with the consistency of beanbags by the fifth inning, and batting technique hadn't developed to the point yet where there was any sort of power to be feared. They cruised for long periods.

Read some of the books by that era's pitchers on their craft. Christy Mathewson wrote how stamina was important, because he might need 100 pitches to throw a complete game on a busy day.

 

Lot more first-ball hitters in those days, a lot less dithering on the hill and in (and out, and in, and out) of the goddamn batter's box.
Some things were better, then.

 

You forgot Stephen Strasburg [/bobcostas]

 

As someone who gladly would've bought a Ryan Express lunchbox as a kid, I say screw you guys!

A staggering SEVEN no hitters, BY FAR the most in MLB history; a staggering 5714 strikeouts, BY FAR the most in MLB history. And, for a guy who supposedly took a "long, long time to figure out to win", he still somehow managed to come up with 324 wins, more than all but four pitchers in MLB history since the close of the dead ball era. How can you keep that guy out of the top 20 club just because of a career ERA stat? Oughta put ya in a Robin Ventura style headlock just for suggesting it.

 

Tune in tomorrow for Top 17 Left-Handed Pitchers to Start a Thursday Day Game (Sidearmed Division).

Ridiculous exercise.

 

If Ryan had the same career 10 years later, he would be Exhibit No. 1 for suspicion of PEDs. His K/9 rate had dropped to about 8-9 for several years as he entered his mid- to late-30s, then all of a sudden, post-40, he runs off four strikeout titles in a row, recording K/9 rates of 11-plus. I'm not sure what the explanation was, because he seems to have missed the steroid era by a few years, but that career, a few years later, is every bit as suspicious as Clemens.

 

But he didn't. His career just pre-dated the steroid era, he was therefore undisputably clean. Now I will hear no more of this blasphemy.

 

1st all-time in walks allowed
Top-50 in hits and home runs allowed
4th most earned runs allowed
3rd in career losses (if you are into that sort of stat)
2nd in career wild pitches
Led the league in errors at his position four times, 26th all-time

Can we put Ryan on the bottom 20 list?

 

All I'll say is:

It ain't necessarily so.

 

I'm displeased with the direction this thread has turned.

 

Um. . .

http://www.anabolicsmall.com/roida3a.htm

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/magazine/03/11/steroid.timeline/index.html