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Nolan Ryan actually has the best hits-per-nine innings average in baseball history - and yet he was still barely better than a .500 pitcher with a lifetime ERA (3.19) barely .40 below his league's average. (Gibson was nearly a full point under his league's average lifetime.) You can't just attribute this to bad teams, however - Walter Johnson and Tom Seaver actually played for more bad teams than Ryan did. A guy who's giving up only six hits a game average should have been a 20-game winner more than twice in his lifetime - Ryan's only two such seasons in a 27 year career put him at 21-16 and 22-16. That's not exactly the kind of pitching you expect out of a holy terror. Moreover, Ryan overall was not one of the prime pitchers in his league when his teams were in a pennant race down to the hot stretch, other than in 1969, when he was used as a spot starter as well as a reliever for the marbles-winning Mets. He was actually better in the post-season than he was in the heat of a pennant race - but Greg Maddux is way better in the heat of a pennant race than he's been in the postseason.

Let me share with you this analysis by Bill James, whose rating system based on win shares puts Nolan Ryan ranked as the number 24th pitcher of all time. I've seen others, I think I indicated above, which put him around 30th, but I think James has the better placement. Here's James:

The mystique of Nolan Ryan was based on two things. First, the other players were somewhat in awe of Ryan. The hitters were in awe of him because they couldn't hit him; the pitchers were in awe of him because they understood how difficult it was to do what he did.

Second, while Ryan was certainly not the greatest pitcher of his time, he was one of the most unusual pitchers of all time. Ryan tried to throw unhittable pitches, one after another, even to weak hitters, even when he was behind in the count. The "ease up and let the fielders do their work" software had never been installed on his machine. From the beginning of his career to his end, a Nolan Ryan game featured strikeouts, walks, and very few hits.

This could be perceived in two ways. On the one hand, it could be perceived as a "no compromises" position, that Ryan never gave in to the hitter, even in situations where any other pitcher would have. But on the other hand, it could be seen as a sort of permanent compromise. Ryan was saying to the hitters, in essence, "You can have a walk if you want it, but I'm not giving you anything to hit." Giving the hitter the walk, in some eyes, was enough.

Sportswriters could have portrayed Ryan either as a heroic pitcher who never compromised, or as a pitcher who was constitutionally compromised. But, because Ryan was so respected by the other athletes, the option of portraying him as constitutionally compromised was shut off to sportswriters, who were unwilling to present Ryan in a manner that might not have set well with the other players...

But the other option, the option of portraying Ryan as a very flawed pitcher, was quite obvious, and loomed like an elm tree over all discussions of Nolan Ryan. And this led to a lot of nonsensical information being generated on behalf of Ryan - for example, sportswriters would write that Ryan added 10,000 fans to the gate every time he pitched, when in reality 500 fans was a generous estimate; or, point out that between 1972 and 1978 Ryan was 107-1 or something when he entered the eighth inning with a lead (which is a meaningless stat, because managers never allow a pitcher to lose the game in late innings. Everybody wins almost all his decisions when entering the eighth inning with a lead, because if you're going to lose that game, you'll let the bullpen lose it).

The struggle between these two views of Ryan propelled him out of the class of ordinary players and lifted his image to a plateau beyond. Ryan has been retired almost ten years; in another ten perhaps we will begin to get a little bit of perspective on him. Ryan's log of spectacular accomplishments is as thick as Bill Clinton's little black book; his list of flaws and failures is lengthy but dry, and will never make for good reading. He rates as well as he does here in part because my method compares a pitcher to zero; he ranks not nearly as well if he is compared to the average.

A no-questions-asked Hall of Famer - but not by a long shot the most lethal pitcher of his time or anyone's. The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract rates the top 25 pitchers of all time accordingly, starting with the bottom of that list:

25. Dizzy Dean.
24. Nolan Ryan.
23. Ferguson Jenkins.
22. Whitey Ford.
21. Juan Marichal.
20. Three-Finger Brown.
19. Ed Walsh.
18. Gaylord Perry.
17. Jim Palmer.
16. Robin Roberts. (He's usually underrated because he wasn't a big strikeout pitcher, but most analysts objectively believe he threw at least as hard as Bob Gibson or even Nolan Ryan - and that he was the best pitcher in baseball between 1949 and 1955, who pitched mostly for teams worse than Ryan's worst teams.)
15. Steve Carlton.
14. Greg Maddux.
13. Carl Hubbell.
12. Bob Feller.
11. Roger Clemens.
10. Sandy Koufax.
9. Kid Nichols.
8. Bob Gibson.
7. Christy Mathewson.
6. Tom Seaver.
5. Warren Spahn.
4. Cy Young.
3. Grover Cleveland Alexander.
2. Lefty Grove.
1. Walter Johnson.

Not a bad staff, there...