Consecutive Games Striking Out All 3 Batters Faced

Last night, the Braves’ Jonny Venters

struck out all 3 batters faced. That’s notable in itself, but it’s particularly intriguing because Venters did the same thing in his last outing, putting him in some rather select company.

Only 1 pitcher in MLB history has had 3 consecutive outings in which he has faced 3 batters and struck them all out. Can you guess who it is? Another 17 have managed to do it in 2 straight games. No one has had multiple streaks, and several pitchers that I expected to make the list did not. All in all, there have been 1,543 outings that meet those criteria in MLB history, the vast majority of them since 1990.

I should emphasize that, in order to make the research feasible, this list is only for outings of exactly 3 batters in length. So outings with, say, 4 batters faced and 4 strikeouts won’t count.

I think Armando Benitez

gets a bit of a bad rap. I mean, his reputation as a difficult teammate may well be deserved, and the last 4 or so years of his career were pretty awful, but in this prime, he was fantastic. From 1997 to 2004, he struck out over 30% of the hitters he faced (11.4 batters per 9 innings) with a 164 ERA+. Yeah, he had some walk problems–like a lot of guys on this list–but he was very hard to hit when he was on. For now, anyway, he’s the only player with 3 straight 3 batter/3 strikeout games.

The only player with more career 3 BF/3 K games than Benitez (who had 21) is Billy Wagner

, who had an astonishing 32 (52% more than anyone else!). Yet Wagner never did it in consecutive games. He’s easily the most surprising omission from the list.

The most surprising player who did make the list, for me, is Ron Robinson

. Those 2 consecutive 3 BF/3 K games were the only 2 of his career. They came at the end of 1986, which was the only season in which Robinson was mostly a reliever. He only had 11 appearances in which he faced 3 batters and retired them in order, yet somehow 2 of them, on back-to-back nights, were all-strikeout outings.

Dick Radatz

‘s inclusion isn’t exactly surprising, but a pitcher from the 1960′s certainly seems out of place on this strikeout-heavy list. But Radatz was always a few decades ahead of his time. His high strikeout and walk rates foreshadowed the bullpen trends of the 1990′s, as did his “3 dominant seasons and then not much else” career arc. Several other relievers on this list followed that pattern, including Eric Gagne , Byung-Hyun Kim , John Rocker , and Billy Koch . We could be adding Jonathan Broxton ‘s name to the list soon, as well. Throwing hard is a perilous profession; some guys can make it work for a long career, but the failure rate is quite high.

Still, we can appreciate these guys while they are in their primes, and root for them to achieve ever more ridiculous feats of dominance. Accordingly, I hope everyone tunes into Venters’ next outing to see if he can match Benitez’s streak. Even among modern flame-throwing relievers, such a streak is rare, and very impressive.