How do y'all rate Nolan Ryan as a pitcher?

In the conversation for greatest #2 pitcher ever, so top 30ish starter? I wouldn't want him as my team's ace but he could eat innings and get strikeouts. If we were doing a 30 team draft with players from all time, he'd end up being the 2nd starter taken by a team depending on what they prioritize.

Tom Seaver was a #1 in front of him, JR Richard, Mike Scott..some competitive teams there.

He has a 3.19 career era. Had he been part of good organizations, his overall wins go way up.

Robin Ventura's biggest mistake was charging that mound...

When you watch the video, before he gets to Ryan, he slows down and It looks like he's thinking, "it's too late now"...

When the fight ends, looks like his ego was shot down, and someone kicked his dog...

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The running joke is, who was the only batter to get 6 hits and never reach base? Robin ventura

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Had a single sub 2 ERA season in 27 years. Had a middling K/BB ratio.

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The game was very different. You mentioned Kershaw; Kershaw led the league in 2015 with 232 inning pitched. Ryan had more than that 10 times in his career with a career high of 332. His 162 game average for his entire 27 year career was... 232 IP. He averaged 7 innings per start for his entire career as well.

He put in a lot of work into late innings that modern starters would never see or have to deal with that level of fatigue.

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Lost a lot of games.

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I think we all now know how little this mean when he played for bad teams for most of his career. I think we've finally come around to how little losses mean with Skenes winning the Cy Young.

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Was never the best pitcher in baseball.

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He was robbed of the Cy Young twice and arguably a third time. The worst was in 1987 where he was by far the best pitcher in the game.

He led the league in ERA, Stikeouts, ERA+, Hits per 9, SO / 9, SO / BB, and was second in the league in a bunch of other stats.

The Cy Young went to Steve Bedrosian a reliever with an ERA higher than Ryan, but hd 40 saves. They denied Ryan because he played for a terrible Houston team that year and had a losing record of 8-16. Much like Skenes this past year he had 10 of his losses come in games where he went 7+ innings and gave up 2 runs or less.

the greatest of all-time...duh

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12 one hitters

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What is crazy about this is that most pitchers now will not even carry 12 games into the 9th for their entire career.

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With his stuff he ought to have had a much better winning pct.

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Here's an interesting stat that may clear things up on his career W/L record.

Nolan Ryan had 198 career non-win quality starts. He was 0-107 with a 2.27 ERA, 1.166 WHIP, & 9.77 K/9 in those starts

For the counter to this; he had 35 wins off non-quality starts for his career.

He was the all time king of no run support. He and Felix Hernandez can share that distinction.

Steve Carlton was better