In the long and storied history of professional baseball, while power pitchers have been an enduring archetype, very few fireballers have achieved both dominance and longevity. In fact, there are currently only four pitchers in the 300+ win, 4,000+ strikeout club: Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, and Randy Johnson. While today’s fans may better remember the more recent Cy Young-winning ways of the right-handed Clemens and the southpaw Johnson, the duo of Carlton and Ryan was the original lefty/righty power pairing – given their careers essentially overlapped and the interesting contrasts between their games (besides righty and lefty, Cy Youngs vs. no-hitters, NL vs. primarily AL, etc.), this inevitably leads to the question:
Who was better – Steve Carlton or Nolan Ryan?
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