Nolan Ryan Philosophy

It's hot in Texas.  The summer weather wears on the players, as Arlington hosts Rangers games regularly over 100 degrees in the summer.  The 'cool summer nights' are only about 80 degrees, which is no breeze.  The position players get to stand around and wait for something to happen, but the pitchers exert the most energy of anyone on the field on every play.  They sweat like dogs, but can't relax because a loss of intensity and focus will result in the hitters watching meatballs in one of the best hitters park in the league.  The obsession of the 2000s in the starting pitching world was one varying statistic: pitch counts.  Pitch counts have come to develop theories for pretty much everything from injury to sophomore slumps.  Nolan Ryan, however, isn't buying into any of that.  He walked and struck out many hitters resulting in high pitch counts early in his starts, but he didn't think that he was done just because he had thrown a lot of pitches.  This concept is called, "back to the future on the mound."  Ryan didn't try to make every at-bat perfect, he just scrambled to get outs as fast as possible.  In his words, he "had to develop stamina because my intent was to pitch a lot of innings."  Mike Maddux, brother of pitching great Greg Maddux and former major league pitcher himself, endorses the idea and has implemented it the last two seasons when Ryan first made headlines with this statement.  "The ceiling is off," said Maddux. "This is a mental thing we have to overcome. We have to change the attitude of the starters to want to go deep and believe they can."  He also thinks a pitch count is not what tells a pitcher he is finished, saying instead that "the hitters will let you know that."  The Ryan theory has pitching doing well, and the dramatic turnaround can be seen in the stats.  Not pitch count stats, but ERA.  The Texas Rangers have long been notorious for a high powered long ball offense with no pitching, a problem that plagued them eternally.  The offense finally paid off earning three meaningless trips to the playoffs in the late 1990s, but they had yet to overcome their issues pitching in the 2000s.

In 2008, led by staff ace Vicente Padilla's 4.74 ERA, the Rangers finished last in baseball with a 5.37 team ERA.  Closer C.J. Wilson had a 6.02 ERA and led the team with 24 saves, while five others also recorded saves.  While Josh Hamilton had an MVP caliber season, the Rangers were unable to hold any lead given and struggled to a 79-83 finish.  In 2009, the Rangers stayed in contention most of the season only to be beaten out by the Angels.  The pitching, however, finished with an MLB rank of 18th, a big improvement over that 30th in 2008 and 24th in 2007.  In 2010, the Rangers won the division and now head to the World Series having ranked 10th in ERA.  The transformation is complete.  For the first time in franchise history they will play for it all having allowing the sixth-fewest runs in the regular season since moving to Texas 39 years ago, and the 687 runs they did allow was the fewest since 1983.  So with pitching as a strength of the Rangers, finally, watch them in this series because we are watching history in the making.