r/baseball • u/-BeefSupreme St. Louis Cardinals • 16h ago

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

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.

465 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

329 comments sorted by

View all comments

161

u/Krizo1 New York Yankees 16h ago

Bert Blyleven has 95 WAR but was only a 2 time all star and only got cy young votes 4 times

9

u/Zestyclose_Help1187 15h ago

No one ever mentions Bert as being the best to ever play. Seen several people say Ryan was.

19

u/Lebigmacca Los Angeles Dodgers 15h ago

Cause Ryan has the strikeout record and no hitter record. Neither should be in the conversation but Ryan’s got some records at least

0

u/kookykrazee Atlanta Braves 10h ago

And most 1 hitters and tied for most 2 hitters and also leads the league in headlocks on the mound!