 Ryan was the first pitcher in MLB history to give up ten grand slam home runs, including one to Dann Howitt, the next-to-last batter Ryan faced in his career; he has since been surpassed.Bill James focuses on this dichotomy between Ryan's positive and negative statistics.While ranking him as the 24th best pitcher of all time, he notes, "Ryan has been retired almost ten years [in 2001], in another ten perhaps we will begin to get a little bit of perspective on him.