I know there are probably none of you in the audience who don’t remember Nolan Ryan, but as an organizing device, I’m going to pretend there are, anyway. Nolan Ryan was the ultimate power pitcher. Ryan threw harder than any other pitcher of his generation or perhaps any generation, and it wasn’t like he did this once. Ryan could stand on the mound and throw a hundred miles an hour for 9 innings, 10 innings, 11, 12, 13. He would throw more than 200 pitches in a game, come back three days later ready to do it again. He did this for years in a four-man rotation, switched to a five-man rotation and pitched another fifteen years. He threw no-hitters almost as a matter of routine. He holds the single-season record for strikeouts, and broke the career record for strikeouts by some ridiculous margin.
Nolan Ryan was Roger Clemens’ boyhood idol, but whereas Clemens became a genuinely great pitcher Ryan was not. Ryan was the most impressive pitcher who ever lived. He did absolutely phenomenal things with such regularity that people took it for granted. But he was not a great pitcher because he never compromised, which means that he never adjusted. He was, in a sense, a perpetual rookie. He was out there to strike the hitter out—period, even when he was 44 years old. He could be behind the number eight hitter 2-0 with the bases empty, and in his mind he was still working on a strikeout. The concept of “let him hit it and see what happens” absolutely wasn’t there for him.
He won a huge number of games, true (324), but he lost almost as many. He holds the career record for strikeouts by a wide margin—and the record for walks by an even wider margin. He holds the career record for Wild Pitches. He did nothing at all to stop the running game, allowing 757 stolen bases in his career, which is almost certainly a record. . .anyway he led the league in stolen bases allowed eight times. He committed 90 errors in his career, with a career fielding percentage of .895. His positive numbers will stagger you, but his negative numbers will knock you out.
To win an award properly commemorating Nolan Ryan, then, requires not merely that you win games but also that you lose them, and lose them with style. It requires that you be an iron man, and also that you be a wild man, or at least a wild pitcher. There is a formula for this. . .of course, as I have written, awards based directly on statistics are silly and superfluous, but there’s no actual trophy; we’re just having fun here. The formula is
Wins
Times Losses
Times Strikeouts
Times Walks
Divided by Innings Pitched
And the 2007 winner was: Carlos Zambrano. Zambrano actually almost won it in 2006, as well, and to put Nolan Ryan in a little bit of perspective, Zambrano over the two years, being the major leagues’ most unreformed power pitcher, has had a total of 387 strikeouts, 216 walks, which interestingly enough isn’t that far from what Nolan Ryan would do in one season. If you could put Nolan Ryan in perspective he wouldn’t be so fascinating; what is so compelling about him is that you can’t put him in perspective. He is so far outside the norms of history that there’s really no way to put a frame of reference around him. If Carlos Zambrano pitched another hundred innings and increased his strikeouts and walks per inning by about 30%, he’d be close to Ryan.
Anyway, this being based on a formula we can figure the Nolan Ryan Award winners throughout history. The only guys really close to Ryan were Amos Rusie, Bobo Newsom, Bob Feller, Sam McDowell and the young Randy Johnson; Randy was Ryanesque in his early years, but then decided to stop walking so many people and losing so many games. This is the year by year list:
1880—Jim McCormick 1890—Amos Rusie
; 1881—George Derby 1891—Amos Rusie
  1882—Jim McCormick 1892—Amos Rusie
  1883—Tim Keefe 1893—Amos Rusie
  1884—Dupee Shaw 1894—Amos Rusie
1885—Hardie Henderson 1895—Amos Rusie
1876—Jim Devlin 1886—Toad Ramsey 1896—Pink Hawley
1877—Jim Devlin 1887—Toad Ramsey 1897—Doc McJames
1878—Will White 1888—Ed Seward 1898—Cy Seymour
1879—Will White 1889—Mark Baldwin 1899—Cy Seymour
Cy Seymour switched to the outfield after an arm injury, and was perhaps the best player in baseball in 1905. Moving on. . ..
1900—Noodles Hahn 1910—Walter Johnson 1920—Ferdie Schupp
1901—Wild Bill Donovan 1911—Pete Alexander 1921—Red Faber
1902—Vic Willis 1912—Ed Walsh 1922—Red Faber
1903—Christy Mathewson 1913—Tom Seaton 1923—Dazzy Vance
1904—Rube Waddell 1914—Earl Moseley 1924—Burleigh Grimes
1905—Orval Overall 1915—Al Schulz 1925—Sam Jones
1906—Cy Falkenberg 1916—Elmer Myers 1926—George Uhle
1907—Ed Walsh 1917—Pete Schneider 1927—Charlie Root
1908—Nap Rucker 1918—Walter Johnson 1928—George Pipgras
1909—Nap Rucker 1919—Jim Shaw 1929—George Earnshaw
Several Hall of Famers in this group. Christy Mathewson doesn’t sound right, but in 1903 Matty was 22 years old and walked 100 men, although even so he won 30 games. Several of these guys stayed around long enough to become more mature pitchers. Most do not; most Nolan Ryan Award winners burn themselves out before they stop walking people.
1930—George Earnshaw 1940—Bob Feller 1950—Warren Spahn
1931—Wes Ferrell 1941—Bob Feller 1951—Warren Spahn
1932—Bump Hadley 1942—Johnny Vander Meer 1952—Early Wynn
1933—Bump Hadley 1943—Johnny Vander Meer 1953—Billy Pierce
1934—Bobo Newsom 1944—Bill Voiselle 1954—Bob Turley
1935—Dizzy Dean 1945—Hal Newhouser 1955—Sam Jones
1936—Van Lingle Mungo 1946—Bob Feller 1956—Herb Score
1937—Bobo Newsom 1947—Hal Newhouser 1957—Early Wynn
1938—Bobo Newsom 1948—Bob Feller 1958—Sam Jones
1939—Bob Feller 1949—Bob Lemon 1959—Sam Jones
The Sam Jones who won in 1925 and the Sam Jones who won numerous times in the fifties and sixties are not the same person, obviously. Sad Sam Jones, who won 229 games between 1914 and 1935, was an off-speed pitcher who had kind of an atypical year in 1925, when the Yankees finished seventh. The Sam Jones from the fifties was a big square-shouldered fireballer who came in from the Negro Leagues, pitched with a toothpick in his mouth. He and Herb Score were teammates at Indianapolis in 1954. Wasn’t nobody digging in on that team, I’ll tell you that.
1960—Sam Jones 1970—Sam McDowell 1980—Steve Carlton
1961—Sandy Koufax 1971—Bill Stoneman 1981—Mario Soto
1962—Joey Jay 1972—Nolan Ryan 1982—Steve Carlton
1963—Steve Barber 1973—Nolan Ryan 1983—Steve Carlton
1964—Bob Veale 1974—Nolan Ryan 1984—Fernando Valenzuela
1965—Sam McDowell 1975—Nolan Ryan 1985—Mario Soto
1966—Denny McLain 1976—Nolan Ryan 1986—Mark Langston
1967—Sam McDowell 1977—Nolan Ryan 1987—Mark Langston
1968—Sam McDowell 1978—J. R. Richard 1988—Charlie Hough
1969—Sam McDowell 1979—Phil Niekro 1989—Mark Langston
If we banned knuckleballers from the list, the winners would be Nolan Ryan in ’79 and Dave Stewart in’88. Steve Carlton is an exception to the rule, in that he won the award several times as an aging pitcher, having not won it when he was younger—because of Nolan Ryan. Carlton, who finished second to Ryan in ’74, was a couple of years older than Nolan, but he had a fantastic conditioning regimen which enabled him to become baseball’s hardest-working pitcher in his late thirties.
1990—Bobby Witt 2000—Matt Clement
1991—Randy Johnson 2001—Ryan Dempster
1992—Randy Johnson 2002—Kazuhisa Ishii
1993—Randy Johnson 2003—Kerry Wood
1994—Juan Guzman 2004—Oliver Perez
1995—Chuck Finley 2005—Chris Capuano
1996—Al Leiter 2006—Ted Lilly
1997—Hideo Nomo 2007—Carlos Zambrano
1998—Randy Johnson
1999—Russ Ortiz
Yeah, that’s right. The list for the last ten years confirms my intuition, which was that there really hasn’t been a pitcher in the Nolan Ryan/Sam McDowell/Mark Langston/Young Randy Johnson mode for several years. Zambrano, having led the majors twice in a row in walks, is as close to that as we have come, but the Nolan Ryan Award has been the kiss of death since 2000. Most of these pitchers—almost all of whom either are with the Cubs or were at the time—have gotten hurt after having a couple of 15-14 seasons with 112 walks. The Cubs just love these guys, and are determined to prove that they can win with them. And, you know, good luck with that; I like power pitchers, too.