Nolan Ryan and the 25 Greatest Right-Handed Pitchers in MLB History

In a season that has seen Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers announce himself as a true ace and maybe the best pitcher in baseball, it has been common to see Verlander compared to fellow flamethrower Nolan Ryan.

No right-handed pitcher since Ryan has had the sort of consistent velocity, paired with a dominant breaking pitch, that Verlander shows. Not even Roger Clemens had the potential for dominance on any given day that Verlander has shown, as the Tigers ace twirled his second career no-hitter earlier this season.

Still, it's a bit early to compare Verlander to Ryan, whose career saw him allow fewer hits per nine innings than any hurler in history. It may well be that Verlander, along with Felix Hernandez and a few other active pitchers, could crack that company before their careers are over, but for now, here are the men they're chasing: the 25 best right-handed pitchers of all time.

An Explanatory Note

It's very hard to draw comparisons across eras, especially when league ERAs fluctuate so much and the game has changed so drastically over time. In fact, I threw out a few pitchers who pitched primarily before 1893 and from whose numbers it is therefore very hard to make heads or tails.

One way of getting around this: FIP-, a tremendous stat from FanGraphs that:

* Focuses on the things a pitcher can readily control (walks, strikeouts, batted-ball tendencies)

* Corrects for the things that a pitcher cannot control (BAbip, ballpark, bullpen, etc.)

* Corrects again for the league and environment in which a pitcher pitched (this is the "minus" factor: it shows how far above or below the league-average figure that pitcher was given his context)

A FIP- will be expressed as a whole number, relative to 100. Lower is better. If a given pitcher has a 90 career FIP-, he was 10 percent better than his contemporaries when it came to the things that fall under a pitcher's purview.

Looking closely at that number can go a long way toward telling us who the best pitchers ever really were, regardless of when they played. It should not be used as a stand-in for all other stats and available information, but it's a terrific baseline. Keeping that in mind, I've included each hurler's career FIP- alongside his name in the title of his slide. Enjoy.

25. Bret Saberhagen, 79 FIP-

Only 12 pitchers in big-league history have better career strikeout-to-walk ratios than Saberhagen's 3.64 mark.

He won two Cy Young awards and probably deserved a third.

His control was freakish, to the tune of 1.7 walks per nine innings for his career, and though he won just 167 games, he was one of the best command pitchers ever at a time when that kind of pitcher struggled to overcome skyrocketing home-run rates.

24. Juan Marichal, 89 FIP-

Marichal's career was nearly stained forever by the frightening, calamitous incident between he and John Roseboro during a Dodgers-Giants brawl.

But his greatness outshone that indiscretion, and Marichal finished his career with over 2,300 strikeouts in over 3,500 big-league innings.

His high leg kick and sustained success made him one of the first great Dominican stars.

23. Mike Mussina, 81 FIP-

Mussina's baseball story is bittersweet in many ways. After winning 19 games twice and 18 three times, Mussina hung up his spikes after an age-39 season in which he finally won 20 for the first time.

He probably could have pitched into his 40s, because control (not velocity or sheer stuff) drove his success. He finished his career with a 3.58 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

None of that is even the sad part, though. After years of struggling to beat the Yankees as the ace of the Baltimore Orioles, Mussina defected to New York for the 2001 season. At that point, the Yankees had won three straight World Series and four of the last five.

From there on, though, despite several near misses, they would not win until 2009—the year after Mussina's (premature?) retirement.

22. Jim Palmer, 96 FIP-

Palmer was not the classic sabermetrician's pitcher.

He struck out fewer than two batters for each that he walked during his career. But he got the job done year after year, pitching in front of a defense that included Brooks Robinson and Mark Belanger.

Palmer probably could have missed more bats or even walked fewer men, but it made the most sense for him to simply miss the good part of the bat and watch his infield gobble up batters' feeble efforts. It worked, to the tune of three Cy Young awards.

21. Bert Blyleven, 81 FIP-

Wins and losses are a crummy way to evaluate a pitcher, and if you don't believe me, check out Blyleven's 287-250 record.

Though barely above .500 by that primitive measurement, he struck out over 3,700 batters in a career carved from a tremendous curveball.

Blyleven was underrated and underrepresented on the Hall of Fame ballot for too long.

20. Kevin Brown, 79 FIP-

Best remembered for the dud contract he signed in his mid 30s, Brown was one of the best pitchers of his day.

He did everything well, piled up innings and had (considering his time and place) one of the best three-year stretches in big-league history from 1996-98.

19. Bob Feller, 89 FIP-

For trivia buffs, Feller was the first man in baseball to enlist in the military after Pearl Harbor, and he was damn near the last man to come home.

He took that fighter's mentality to the mound, where he lived (as a later Bob also would) on a vicious fastball-hard slider combo that intimidated everyone, no less because Feller did not always know where the ball was going.

He fell off in his later years and probably (this is that proud, fighting spirit again) hung around longer than he ought to have. Still, he was one of the dominant pitchers of his or any era.

18. Ferguson Jenkins, 87 FIP-

Strangely, Jenkins was a control artist who had a terrific peak but not sustained excellence.

The reverse is often true of guys with fine command, but then, some guys cannot afford to lose that little edge of movement, stuff or intimidation.

In Jenkins' case, drug abuse did not help anything. Nonetheless, he finished with 1.99 walks per nine innings for his career and won 284 games.

17. John Smoltz, 78 FIP-

Occasional injury problems and a four-year foray into the bullpen kept Smoltz from reaching his absolute peak, although to be fair, they also forced him to refine command that he seriously lacked early in his career.

Smoltz was the percussion section in the symphony that was the 1990s Braves rotation, bringing more heat and more power than Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine or Steve Avery.

In that way, he lent them a badly needed balance.

16. Tim Lincecum, 70 FIP-

Is it early yet on Lincecum? You bet.

His rate stats look exceptional in part because he has not yet reached the point in his career where pitchers generally fade and must watch those rates decline a bit. He has only 996 innings under his belt.

But even as peaks go, Lincecum is having a ridiculous one. He could make a very cogent case for his third Cy Young award this year, at ages 26 and 27.

He will not win, but it's not out of the question that Lincecum could run up another two or three awards before he's done.

Oh, and he dominated in the postseason en route to the Giants winning the World Series last season.

15. Nolan Ryan, 84 FIP-

No pitcher in big-league history has allowed as few hits per nine innings pitched as did Ryan.

He was the best intimidator this side of Bob Gibson and had the stuff to back it up.

His strikeout record is one of the great untouchable marks in baseball lore.

14. Mordecai Brown, 83 FIP-

His hand gnarled by a farming accident as a boy, "Three-Finger" Brown embraced his disability and won 20-plus games in six straight seasons.

He finished with a ridiculous 2.06 career ERA and won 239 games.

13. Ed Walsh, 79 FIP-

Before his career fizzled, Walsh won 195 games in the dead-ball era.

He posted a 1.82 ERA and 1.97 FIP, mostly because he allowed roughly one homer per 100 innings pitched.

If that skill hadn't been enough, his game face might still have made him a fine hurler.

12. Bob Gibson, 81 FIP-

Extreme usage (he frequently threw 175 pitches in starts and surpassed 275 innings virtually every year) probably affected Gibson's career arc after that legendary 1968 season. However, he did manage to win three World Series and might be the best World Series pitcher of all time.

11. Curt Schilling, 74 FIP-

A string of some great seasons in his 30s made Schilling a true legend, but his career 4.38 strikeout-to-walk ratio might have put him in that territory anyway.

Schilling is yet another great postseason arm, having won three World Series.

He racked up over 3,200 career innings but won only 216 games. Nonetheless, he belongs in the Hall of Fame.

10. Mariano Rivera, 62 FIP-

Our parade of playoff superstars continues.

Rivera is so far separated from every other relief pitcher in history, and the fact that he is a relief pitcher doesn't tarnish his numbers.

He also has the best adjusted ERA (relative to his league) in MLB history.

9. Tom Seaver, 85 FIP-

FIP is awesome, but it doesn't always tell the whole story.

Seaver could have struck out more batters if he had needed to, but in a pitcher-friendly era dominated as much by defensive wizardry as by moundsmen themselves, that need never really arose.

Seaver's fastball faded after a heavy workload at a young age, but he still found success because of his control and his secondary offerings.

8. Cy Young, 82 FIP-

The award for pitching excellence still bears Young's name, but please remember, dear reader, that Young himself was not even a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

His numbers have taken on a new mystique over the years as pitching workloads have lessened and several of Young's records have moved far beyond reach, and he was certainly great, but he also wasn't as dominant over other pitchers of his era as were some of the guys you'll see later on this list.

7. Pete Alexander, 81 FIP-

Grover Cleveland Alexander had a drinking problem and epilepsy, but when he was on the mound, he was quite healthy and at home.

He might have been the best all-around pitcher of the dead-ball era. From 1915-1920, he never had a season ERA above 1.91, and he won 139 games in those six years.

6. Christy Mathewson, 76 FIP-

It was a well-aged Mathewson whom Alexander supplanted as the National League's top ace.

Mathewson was an artisan on the mound, possessed of great stuff but wise enough to conserve effort and pitch, rather than merely throw.

If it's a treatise on pitching you want, check out Mathewson's memoirs. They're brilliant.

5. Roy Halladay, 75 FIP-

I just know I'll be flayed for this one. I can imagine the comments:

"Dude, I'm a Phillies fan and even I think that's nuts. Terrible list. Halladay at five? Five?! Come on!"

That's fine. This is a bold selection, I admit. But it's only fair to point out the following:

* Halladay ranks sixth in FIP—and eighth in ERA—in MLB history.

* Pitching in the toughest division in big-league history, Halladay represented one of the weaker cousins. He had to pitch against Boston and New York between five and eight times a year combined during his first decade in the show.

* He has walked just 1.84 batters per nine innings for his career.

* He threw a no-hitter in his first postseason start after throwing a perfect game in May of that year.

Yes, Halladay's traditional raw numbers make him a fringe Cooperstown candidate at best. But look deeper, and you'll see a guy who pitched for too long on a mediocre team, against absolutely great teams, in very tough pitching environments, and who always outperformed his results.

4. Greg Maddux, 77 FIP-

Maddux won four straight Cy Young awards in his prime and was the best fielder in the history of the position.

What Mathewson was to the dead-ball Era, Maddux was to the steroid era. Both were masters of the craft, pitchers with feel for the ball and knowledge of all aspects of their duties that far surpassed those of their contemporaries.

He could have retired after 2003 or 2004; no one would have blamed him, and his career numbers would look even better.

But instead, Maddux held on for half a decade and threw over 1,000 innings of league-average (better, at times) ball before retiring after 2008, just to prove that he loved the challenge and loved the game.

3. Roger Clemens, 70 FIP-

He extended his career unfairly with performance-enhancing drugs, but he already rated as an all-time great when he began messing around.

Take away his last two Cy Young awards, which were probably tainted, and you still have five others, plus a pair of 20-strikeout games and (count 'em) 12 postseason wins and two championship rings.

2. Pedro Martinez, 67 FIP-

Clemens piled up over 2,000 more innings than did Martinez. That's about the end of the ways in which Clemens was better.

Since that difference is partially explained by PEDs, it's relatively easy to choose Martinez.

Pedro won 219 games but could have won 250 on better teams, especially given that the Dodgers used him out of the bullpen in the early 1990s and the Expos were terrible.

He won three Cy Youngs and deserved at least one MVP.

1. Walter Johnson, 75 FIP-

Forget the numbers.

All the evidence suggests Johnson literally took it easy on opponents on a semi-regular basis.

He wrestled constantly with the fear that one of his league-best fastballs would kill or maim and pitched to contact while taking a bit off at times just to avoid it.

He was the gentle giant of the dead-ball era and could easily have run up better sheer numbers but for the fact that he was far, far ahead of his time.

Future Members and Honorable Mentions

You might have noticed the large percentage of the list that pitched within the past 30 years.

That's no accident. I submit that pitchers are better able to avail themselves of athletic evolution and advances in conditioning and sports medicine than are hitters.

Barring steroid use, a batter eventually runs into the law of diminishing returns as they add strength or speed.

Pitchers, on the other hand, get better with every mile per hour they add to their fastball and with every inch of break added to the slider.

Therefore, even more of this list may contain active pitchers and recent retirees in 10 years.

Here are three guys who could be on this list someday fairly soon:

1. Justin Verlander

2. Felix Hernandez

3. Stephen Strasburg

And here are three guys whose résumés are complete (or just about) who just missed the list:

1. Tim Hudson

2. Don Drysdale

3. Gaylord Perry