I loved watching Volquez pitch that year. As dominat as any Reds pitcher I've ever seen. Should have started the ASG.
Using Nolan Ryan to dispute the point that guys that walk too many people aren't going to be an ace is kinda missing the big picture. Ryan, as remarkable as he was, is one of the top-5 pitching outliers/freaks (a good freak) of all-time, if not the top one.
Certainly not worthy of the grand "horse-hockey" comeback.
How about Tom Glavine? A pitcher that really wasn't as good as his hype?
Blylevin?
How about Jim Palmer?
four examples of guys that walked a lot of hitters. What they have in common was a relatively low hit rate. Glavine wasn't a big K guy, but he kept the hits down. It isn't walks alone, Big K guys walk more batters in general. Volquez's problem wasn't the walks, it was the hits. If he gave up 30+ fewer hits than IP, you'd be looking at a guy with 200K seasons and a decent 1.20ish WHIP. He'd probably have an ERA in the mid 3's to boot. He does walk too many guys, I'm not denying that. It drives his pitch counts up, but his H/9 this year is 10.0. I don't care if his walks were cut in half, that's a recipe for disaster.
The difference between Volquez and a guy like Cueto is Johnny became a pitcher and EV is still a thrower. Had he taken to coaching better, he'd likely be the better starter.
I do think he's been pitching better lately. 4 out of his last 5 starts have been pretty good with one stinker in there. Maybe he's finally listening.
Dubito Ergo Cogito Ergo Sum.
Tom Servo (07-08-2013)
None of Palmer, Blyleven or Glavine walked guys like Volquez did. In fact, Blyleven had a career rate of 2.39 per 9 innings, an excellent rate.
They also had very low BABIP's, so they undoubtedly benefited from great fielding behind them.
If a pitcher has few K's and a low hit rate, he's either got great fielding behind him or has discovered the secret of controlling BAPIP.
This is going to sound crazy, and I honestly can't believe I am going to type it, but was Nolan Ryan truly an ACE? If we take away the sheer amount of innings he threw in a bunch of seasons, I just don't know if he was. He had four seasons in 27 years with an ERA+ over 128. Compare that with current "ACE" type of guys:
Sabathia has 6 such seasons.
Halladay has 9 such seasons.
Hamels has 5 such seasons.
Pettite has 6 such seasons.
Hudson has 8 such seasons.
Santanta has 9 such seasons.
Oswalt has 7 such seasons.
Lee has 6 such seasons.
Kershaw has 5 such season (in 6 seasons).
Heck, Mark Buehrle has 3 such seasons.
Nolan Ryan may have been an ace because he was a pure workhorse and it is incredibly tough to replace those innings, but very seldom in his career was he an ACE in terms of run prevention compared to the league.
I think the no-hitters support the ACE argument; on any given night, you had the excitement associated with Ryan absolutely dominating. When he was on, he was a wrecking machine. But he was "off" quite a bit due to his control issues, lowering his seasonal averages.
When classifying players, people tend to err on the side of peak performance. What was a guy capable of, not what did he accomplish on net.
Ryan strikes me as like Jay Bruce from a volatility standpoint. When he's hot, he dominates. But he's not consistently at that level of performance. Particularly in terms of looking backward, we increasingly filter out the usual and mundane and focus on the interesting extremes. So our remaining impression is that of a dominant "ACE" rather than a wild-thing who wasn't the most reliable guy.
Last edited by RedsManRick; 07-08-2013 at 03:21 PM.
Games are won on run differential -- scoring more than your opponent. Runs are runs, scored or prevented they all count the same. Worry about scoring more and allowing fewer, not which positions contribute to which side of the equation or how "consistent" you are at your current level of performance.
I think there were some seasons when he was an ace, the 2 years he led the AL in ERA+, for instance, but mostly his legacy is throwing very hard for a very long time, both striking out and walking a lot of guys.
His career has always reminded me of Pete Rose's in a way- a few seasons of excellence where they were at the very top of the game, and very long careers that added up to big counting numbers in the end.
And as RMR said, those 7 no hitters are hard to ignore.
sorry we're boring
Ryan has 5 of the top 20 game scores all time
So yes he could be on.
http://www.totalprosports.com/2013/0...n-mlb-history/
Ace or not (which is an interesting topic), fact is EV should not be mentioned in the same breath as Nolan Ryan, which is where this all started.
“I don’t care,” Votto said of passing his friend and former teammate. “He’s in the past. Bye-bye, Jay.”
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