300 strikeout season: Will we see it again?
By Tim Boyle
Not since 2002 has a pitcher reached 300 strikeouts in a season. That year, Randy Johnson led the league with 334 strike threes while teammate Curt Schilling came in second with 316 of them.
Since 1990, only Johnson, Schilling and Pedro Martinez have passed the 300 strikeout plateau in a single season. Other than Johnson’s 290 strikeouts in 2004 the closest anyone has gotten to 300 in a season was Yu Darvish in 2013. Darvish had 277 strikeouts, still a distant enough where it would have taken at least two starts to reach the milestone.
There are a lot of reasons why nobody strikes out 300 batters in a season anymore. The biggest is that starting pitchers no longer log as many innings as they once did. Complete games are significantly down and bullpens are more important than ever.
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Since 2000, only CC Sabathia in 2008 and James Shields in 2011 reached double-digits in complete games. Every season in Major League Baseball history before 2000, at least one pitcher got to 10 complete games by year’s end. David Wells’ nine complete games in 2000 broke a streak that quietly influenced pitcher statistics. Relief pitchers now had specific roles and became more than a literal interpretation of the position: relief.
Achieving the 300 strikeout milestone is far from a yearly requirement. The majority of men to reach it did so in the 1800s when people could honestly claim they knew Abner Doubleday.
Between Walter Johnson’s 303 strikeouts in 1912 and Bob Feller’s 348 strikeouts in 1946, there was a drought of pitchers striking out 300 in a season. After Feller, the world had to wait until Sandy Koufax’s 306 in 1963.
These early pitchers had the advantage of pitching more innings. Based on Darvish’s league-leading 11.9 strikeouts in 2013 – the year he struck out 277 batters – he would need to pitch only about 225 innings for 300. This would have required Darvish to pitch 15 more innings, which would have taken two or three additional starts.
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Considering he started 32 games in 2013, starting 34 or 35 is a possibility. The biggest roadblock comes from the fact that managers don’t look at innings pitched. For them it’s all about pitch count. One of his few weaknesses, Darvish throws a lot of pitches. In addition to all of the strikeouts, Darvish walks batters at a high rate which adds up. Still, two more above-average starts in 2013 could have gotten Darvish to 300 strikeouts.
One master of the strikeout who doesn’t have the control issues Darvish has is Clayton Kershaw. In 2014 he led all of baseball with 10.8 strikeouts per nine. At this rate, with the 239 strikeouts in 198 1/3 innings he had, it would have taken Kershaw 250 innings to reach 300. Unfortunately, this is not a milestone Kershaw has ever reached – even in the years he started 33 games. To reach 250 innings in 33 starts a pitcher needs to average 7.5 innings per start. Even with a league-leading six complete games in 2014, Kershaw averaged 7.3 innings per start.
The direction things are headed in with fewer complete games, fewer starts and more stringent pitch limits – we may never see a 300 strikeout season again.