Longest Streaks With At Least 6 Strikeouts Per Game

Both CC Sabathia and Justin Verlander have struck out at least 6 batters in each of their last 13 starts. That’s very impressive–it’s a career high for both, and ties the longest such streak in the last 3 years–but it’s nowhere near the record.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the record-holder for this stat is Randy Johnson. What may surprise you, though, is just how long his streak of 6-strikeout games went on:

So um… Randy Johnson was pretty good, wasn’t he? He had 5 separate streaks of at least 18 games, which is as many as Pedro Martinez and Sandy Koufax–no slouches themselves–had combined. The Big Unit’s record-setting 65-game streak took up nearly 2 whole year’s worth of starts, including the entirety of the 1999 season. Oh, and he averaged over 10.5 strikeouts per start in that span (12.3 K/9).

Johnson’s 65-gamer is 27% better than the second-place streak,  Pedro Martinez’s 51-gamer, which was partially concurrent with the Big Unit’s streak. Pedro’s streak is itself 46% better than the third-place streak, Curt Schilling’s 35-gamer. Those are just huge gaps. And of course there’s another big dropoff after Schilling, to Johnson’s 2nd-best streak of 26 games. Other than those 3 pitchers, no one else has had a streak longer than 23 games. And Johnson’s streak went 65. Unreal.

Nolan Ryan never came within 40 games of Johnson’s streak. Neither did Koufax, or Bob Gibson, or Tom Seaver, or anyone else but Pedro (who missed by 14 games) and Schilling (who missed by 30).

Greg Maddux will always be my favorite pitcher because his excellence was so artful, but no one was ever as flat-out overpowering as Randy Johnson in the late ’90s and early ’00s. It’s stats like this one that really drive that point home. Johnson was, literally and figuratively, head and shoulders above every other pitcher in history.