Jacob deGrom's 'milestone' shows how dominant Rangers legend Nolan Ryan was

By most metrics, Jacob deGrom has been one of the most dominant starting pitchers in major league baseball since bursting onto the scene in 2014. The big right-hander, who will turn 38 on June 19, just earned his 100th win on Monday. It took 14 years for him to get to triple digits due to injury and poor offensive production from the teams he has played on.

Rangers legend Nolan Ryan pitched in a different era in the 60s,70s,80s, and 90s, but to put that deGrom number in perspective, the Express had notched his 100th win in his eighth season at age 28 with the California Angels.

There are plenty of other examples of just how incredible Ryan's long career was by putting them next to some of today's top pitchers who are Hall of Fame-bound or very close to it.

Nolan Ryan's statistics next to the best Rangers pitchers of the 21st century illustrate just how dominant he was

deGrom is also just 71 strikeouts shy of 2,000 for his career. By contrast, Ryan had surpassed the 2K mark at just 29. He was just a third of the way through his career and well on his way to an unbelievable total of 5.714, which remains an all-time record and stands as one of those numbers that will likely never be broken.

To paint an even clearer picture of how amazing that strikeout number is, if you combined the strikeout totals of deGrom and former Ranger World Series champion and future HOFer Max Scherzer equal 5,428, meaning they would still come up about 300 short of Nolan's insane K total.

You could also combine deGrom and Scherzer's win totals, and Ryan still leads the way, 324 to 322. This is not to pick on two of the most heralded and HOF-worthy modern-day aces, but rather to further impress upon the casual fan how good Ryan was for so long. He pitched for 27 seasons until the age of 46.

Most of us are struggling to get up from the couch in our mid-forties, but Ryan was still throwing mid-90s heat and tossing the last of his seven no-hitters at 44.

The game has certainly changed quite a bit since Ryan hung up his cleats after the 1993 season, but in an era where a plus fastball clocked in at 90 mph, the Express was running it up there anywhere from 94-96, and he did it over 5,386 innings. And perhaps his most astonishing quality was how he did it without any major arm injuries. Availability is one of the game's biggest assets.

He pitched more than 200 innings in 12 separate seasons and more than 300 innings twice, with a career best 332.2 in 1974. You'd be hard-pressed to find any of today's flamethrowers surpassing 200 innings without breaking down within a few years. Only three did it in 2025 - Logan Webb (207), Garrett Crochet (205.1), and Cristopher Sanchez (202).

His longevity and unrivaled success are likely why most baseball fans across the country still associate Nolan Ryan first when they think of the Texas Rangers.

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