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Originally Posted by Smoothie7745
I have issues about the math of some of the all time statistics on baseballprospectus, too. I'm not the math head to challenge these guys, but by their math, Finley was as good on a game to game basis as Ryan, which just, logically, isn't true, or FINLEY would be the one with 5,714 K's (or a proportion of such based on his career IPs), not Ryan. I think it's supposed to be in reference to consistency overall, but it seems like semantics when Ryan's ERA is almost a run better. Perhaps there's something I don't understand about it, but it seems suspect, to me.
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I think we were both coming at the same q from different angles, so it seems sensible we came up with different results!
The reason that Ryan's ERA is better, but his translated ERA is worse, is that Finley pitched exclusively in the AL in a hitter's ballpark with a DH, while Ryan spent his career flitting around different stadiums, most of which were better for pitchers than Ryan. Moreover, Ryan played in an era where the offense wasn't as prevalent - Ryan retired after 93, which was the start of the massive offensive explosion, so Finley gets credit there.
Over his career, Ryan was considerably more valuable, because he pitched for so long and so many innings. If you were to take one pitcher and keep him for his whole career, you'd take Ryan in an instant!