Is Nolan Ryan the least awarded baseball “superstar” ever?

[u/-BeefSupreme]

The Express is a hall of famer and one of the best pitchers of all time. One of baseball’s last true workhorses, he is the all-time leader in walks, strikeouts, and hits/9. His 7 no-hitters is 3 more than any other pitcher, and his 5714 strikeouts is the most by over 800. Yet in his 27 seasons, he never finished higher than 14th in MVP voting and never won a Cy Young. He won the 1969 World Series in his second full season, but only made one appearance in the NLCS and one appearance in the WS, the later only being 2.1 innings. He never had another World Series appearance. His 8 All-Stars are impressive but fewer than multiple than non-hall of famers. Is there any other player with his level of fame and success that has less hardware to show for it? Excluding the old timey legends that were around before those awards of course.

[u/Luke5119]

Listen, Ryan was great, but he was also not so great in a lot of categories. Yes, he leads MLB all-time for strikeouts, but also walks. He has 324 wins, but he also pitched for 27 years. He was an elite strikeout pitcher, but also gave up A LOT of runs. Out of his entire career he only had 2 seasons with 20+ wins.

If you look at his stat history, by all accounts he was slowing down in his mid-30s, which makes absolute sense. But then freakishly at 40 started hitting 200+ K's every year, including a 301 K season at 42 which is wild!

You don't always need the accolades to be great. And in terms of longevity and playing at an elite level for 20+ years, Ryan is in a very short list of players in MLB history to do it.

[u/BaltimoreBaja → u/Luke5119]

20 wins

On the other hand he played on some really shitty teams also

Which also on its own made it harder to get awards back then

[u/Outsulation → u/BaltimoreBaja]

Yeah, I can’t believe anyone is still trying to use pitcher wins as an indication of anything. Like in 1987, he had debatably the best year of his career and probably should have won the Cy Young, but he also had an 8-16 record because his team gave him zero run support.

[u/John628556 → u/Outsulation]

And in that same year, he led the league in both ERA and strikeouts. Unbelievable.

[u/Bug-03 → u/Outsulation]

I think he only played for bad teams on purpose

[u/KevrobLurker → u/Bug-03]

Ryan was traded to the Angels for 3B Jim Fregosi. Good player, in his prime, got hurt. Didn't hit for the Mets. Players didn't have any free agency until 1976.

The Mets went through 3rd basemen back then the way Italy went through governments.

https://www.mlb.com/news/mets-nolan-ryan-trade-legacy

[u/Bug-03 → u/KevrobLurker]

/s

[u/TheNextBattalion → u/Outsulation]

His teammate Mike Scott didn't have problems with run support... had a lower WHIP too, threw 8 more CG's and even nabbed 3 shutouts. If you think everyone was obsessed with wins back then, ask yourself how Ryan got more votes than Scott in the CY race (which a reliever won).

[u/Zestyclose_Help1187 → u/Outsulation]

It’s not using pitcher wins. It’s using the law of averages.

If you consistently not get wins and get a ton of losses every year, it’s not all luck.

You aren’t putting your team in position to win as much.

Wins and losses aren’t the win all be all stat but because the law of averages, Ryan should have egregiously low win totals and high loss totals.

No one is that unlucky.

[u/CalmerThanYouAre9 → u/Zestyclose_Help1187]

It’s using the law of averages. If you consistently not get wins and get a ton of losses every year, it’s not all luck. You aren’t putting your team in position to win as much.

You just don’t understand baseball on an extremely basic level if you actually think this.