I occasionally see posts on X, the platform formally known as Twitter, that send me off on statistical quests that lead to pages of scribbled notes with columns of numbers. Most of the time I have the best of intentions to turn these pages into a post on this blog. However, I usually wind up setting the notes aside and then have no idea what they are when I stumble onto them weeks later.

Posts about Nolan Ryan seem to trigger my search for data more than any other player. If you were to use Twitter as your only source to determine the greatest player of all time, I think it would come down to a choice among Ryan, Bo Jackson, and Shohei Ohtani.

Reading all the praise heaped upon Ryan on Twitter makes me think of Gaston, the arrogant, Jethro-Bodinish hunter from Disney’s animated classic Beauty and the Beast.

No one hits like Nolan

Matches wits like Nolan

In a spitting match nobody spits like Nolan

A few weeks back someone on Twitter wondered how many strikeouts Ryan would have in today’s game where strikeouts are so prevalent. While there is valid reasoning for such speculation, it made me wonder how many strikeouts Walter Johnson would have had during Ryan’s heyday.

Johnson pitched from 1907-1927, and he struck out 3,509 batters. He became the all-time leader in strikeouts in 1921, passing Cy Young who had 2,803. Johnson held the record for 62 years before Steve Carlton passed him in 1983. Ryan overtook Carlton the following year and finished his career with 5,714 K’s.

During Johnson’s 21-year career, four batters struck out 100 or more times in a season; one of those, Danny Moeller, did it twice, so it happened a total of five times. In Ryan’s first season, 24 batters topped 100 strikeouts, and over the course of his career an average of more than 41 batters per season struck out over 100 times.

There were more teams, and therefore more batters, during Ryan’s time. But consider this: Johnson singlehandedly accounted for 4% of the 87,676 American League strikeouts over the course of his career. So, maybe a better question would be: How many more strikeouts would Johnson have had if he had pitched during Ryan’s day?

A post from a couple of days ago speculated about how many more wins Ryan would have earned if he had pitched for better teams. That set me off on another research project.

Ryan won 324 games in 27 seasons. He played for the New York Mets (1966, 1968-1971) California Angels (1972-1979), Houston Astros (1980-1988), and Texas Rangers (1989-1993). Those teams had a collective winning percentage of .503, whereas Ryan’s individual winning percentage was .526.

Johnson won 417 games in 21 seasons. He pitched his entire career with the Washington Senators, whose winning percentage was .492 during Johnson’s time with the team. Johnson’s career winning percentage was .599. Again, a better question might be: How many more wins would Johnson have if he had played with better teams?

All this research and speculation leads me to a conclusion that likely would shock lots of folks on Twitter: While Nolan Ryan was a great pitcher, he was no Walter Johnson.

And finally, let me revisit Shohei Othani for a bit. Someone posted on Twitter that Babe Ruth hit 665 more home runs after he pitched his 100th complete game. When Othani does a tenth of what Ruth did–hits his 66th home run after pitching his 10th complete game–I’ll be willing to mention him in the same breath as Babe Ruth.

(All statistics are from Baseball Reference.)