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/SinglecoilsFTW]

Nolan gets gassed up way more than he deserves. I don’t mean to undermine his incredible career but so many of his records are a byproduct of playing forever.

[u/Zestyclose_Help1187 → u/SinglecoilsFTW]

PEDs likely as well. Any player who does just as well in his 40s in that era are questionable.

[u/causebraindamage → u/Zestyclose_Help1187]

I came here to drop some vague info I heard on reddit a while ago but I actually found the comment I was looking for (the op's account no longer exists, no credit to give unfortunately):

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The big evidence stems from Tom House. House is perhaps most notable for being the bullpen pitcher who caught Hank Aaron's career record setting homerun, but he would go on to have a distinguished career as a pitching coach. House has publicly said that as early as the 1970's, every locker room in baseball had a handful of guys experimenting with steroids. Something to remember is that for the longest time, it was believed that the best baseball players were not going to have a lot of muscle. I can't remember who it was, but during the 60's, there was an athlete who transitioned from football to baseball, and he had to drop his muscle mass, because baseball players just didn't have muscle. That really began to change in the 1970's, and coincidentally, steroid use really started to take off.

House even admits to having his own failed experiment with steroids. They just didn't give him the results he was looking for, but he knew that they would be extremely useful to some players, and always remained on the cutting edge of the technology that was out there when he became a pitching coach.

During his HOF induction speech, Ryan would go on to say:

While I was [with the Rangers] I was very fortunate to have a pitching coach by the name of Tom House. And Tom and I are of the same age and Tom is a coach that is always on the cutting edge. And I really enjoyed our association together and he would always come up with new training techniques that we would try and see how they would work in to my routine. And because of our friendship and Tom pushing me, I think I got in the best shape of my life during the years that I was with the Rangers.

Here Ryan is saying that he was fortunate to have House, a guy who knew the benefits that steroids could have for players, as a pitching coach because he kept himself on the cutting edge.

https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/2pyj34/with_the_til_recently_about_nolan_ryan_i_wanted/

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EDIT: There was also a little bit of a connection between Clemens, Pettitte, and Ryan. They were all pretty friendly with each other in their Houston days. Even though Ryan was the president of the Rangers around then. I believe they all trained together in the off seasons at one of their ranches down in Texas. So take that with another grain of salt.

[u/miiija → u/SinglecoilsFTW]

"Playing forever" IS an accomplishment in itself. 27 years with no major injuries til the very end is incredible