This is a new feature we’ve come up with here on The Outside Corner. Each Tuesday, I’m going to take a brief look at a legendary baseball player from years gone by and try to come up with the best comparison for him of current players. Now, this piece isn’t going to be along the lines of “Alex Rodriguez is the next Hank Aaron because he’s going to break the home run record”. I’m going to go a little deeper than that. I’m going to look at various underlying statistics that made the legendary player who he was, and what current player best replicates those traits.
Our first legendary player: the all-time strikeout king, Nolan Ryan.
Nolan Ryan is indeed a legend. He played with four teams over his career: the Mets, Angels, Astros, and Rangers. He was one of the most feared pitchers in baseball history, but looking back at the overall numbers…Ryan really wasn’t a soul taking, dominant pitcher in the way that a Pedro Martinez or Greg Maddux was. Ryan was wild, but unhittable at times. He struck out a lot of guys, walked a lot of guys, and didn’t allow many hits. He never won a Cy Young award, but had a record seven no hitters. Over Ryan’s 27 year career, he led the league in strikeouts 11 times, including four times after turning 40. He also led the league in walks eight times. When a man is the all-time leader in both strikeouts and walks, you know you have an interesting character on your hands.
For his career, Ryan struck out 9.54 batters per nine innings and walked 4.67, to give himself a career strikeout to walk ratio of only 2.04. In the 2011 season, that K:BB ratio would rank 79th among 112 qualifying pitchers. When you look at the big picture, it’s not terribly impressive. Where Ryan really stood out from his contemporaries was his ability to avoid allowing hits. Ryan allowed 6.56 hits per nine innings over his career, the best mark in baseball history.
So in looking for a modern comparison to Ryan, we’re looking for a player who doesn’t allow a lot of hits and has spotty control while also striking a lot of hitters out. Looking at similar K:BB ratios to Ryan over a period of time from 2009 to the present gives us a bunch of pitchers who really don’t strike many batters out, and have average control….guys like Kevin Correia, Jarrod Washburn, and Nick Blackburn. None of those pitchers remind anyone of Nolan Ryan, aside from the fact that they’re white male pitchers in the major leagues.
But there’s one name that jumps out at me that appears to be an apt comparison, and that is Jonathan Sanchez of the San Francisco Giants. Sanchez appears to be quite a good comparison for Ryan. Over the past three seasons, his strikeout rate of 9.56 batters per nine innings is fourth in baseball and shockingly close to Ryan’s career mark. He also has the highest walk rate in baseball, at 4.90 batters per nine inings. The walk rate is a little higher than Ryan’s career mark, but when you put the numbers together, you get a 1.95 strikeout to walk ratio. It’s not a direct complement to Ryan’s career mark, but it’s close.
There’s an elephant in the room though, and it’s what I was discussing a paragraph ago: Ryan’s ability to allow a low number of hits. Can Sanchez replicate that ability? In a word…yes. He led baseball in 2010 with a mark of 6.6 hits per nine innings, and since 2009, his mark is at 7.0 hits per nine. It’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s a decent one. Sanchez has the strikeout ability of Ryan, the spotty control, and he’s also got the low hit rate.
There are other factors I didn’t take into account that separates Ryan from Sanchez. After all, no one is a perfect comparison. Sanchez is in his 28 year old season right now and has under 700 career innings. After Ryan’s age 28 season, he had more than double that amount. Baseball is a much different game today than it was in the 1970s, when pitchers were allowed to throw over 250 innings a year like it was no big deal. Ryan also pitched 27 seasons, until he was 46 years old. Sanchez will be lucky to get half of those seasons, as the Giants seem to be growing weary of Sanchez’s control problems and it seems like he’s always on the trading block. In today’s age of sabermetrics and advanced metrics, more weight is placed on a pitcher’s peripheral numbers than in the 70s. A lot of people look at that subpar strikeout to walk ratio and cringe, seeing a pitcher who is rotation filler.
Nolan Ryan was a rare breed in baseball. Jonathan Sanchez is not the next Nolan Ryan. There will never be another Nolan Ryan. But Sanchez has a lot in common with him, and out of all of the players in the league right now, I think he is the most similar to Ryan.
