So rare?

In early August, some lucky bags that I ordered arrived. After opening the second lucky bag, I found an interesting relic card. It’s a showcase sticks card from 2001 Fleer. The card contains a piece of an authentic game-used bat that was used by George Kell, who was inducted to the Hall of Fame in 1983.

 

Well, I never saw George Kell play. However, after checking George Kell’s stats on the great baseball reference website. I found something very interesting. Kell played 1795 games in the majors. He collected 2054 hits and had 78 home runs. His career OPS was .781 and he had 870 RBI. As we can see, he’s not a power hitter. Nonetheless, he was a great contact hitter. In his career, he got struck out only 287 times. Yes, only 287 times and that means averaging 26 strikeouts per 162 games. In his career, he never finished a season with 40 strikeouts.

 

While reading Kell’s stats, I began to think about the players nowadays. As we know, strikeouts have been common in today’s games. Kell had only 287 strikeouts in his career. However, do we see more players who got 200+ strikeouts in a single season very often?

 

Taking a look at the stats from 2010 to 2023, in 2010, Mark Reynolds was the only player who got 200+ strikeouts. And in 2011, Drew Stubbs had 205 strikeouts and he was the only one with 200+ strikeouts. The next season, Adam Dunn was struck out 222 times and no other hitters had 200+ Ks. Nevertheless, Dunn blasted 41 home runs in 2012. In 2013, Chris Carter was the only hitter with 200+ strikeouts.

However, in 2014, no hitters in the majors reached 200 strikeouts. But in 2015, there was a batter with 200+ strikeouts and that batter was Chris Davis. Nonetheless, Davis crushed 47 home runs in 2015. In 2016, 2 players got struck out more than 200 times. One was Chris Davis and the other was Chris Carter. In 2017, Aaron Judge won the AL Rookie of the Year award. He smashed 52 home runs but he was struck out 208 times.

In addition, in 2018, there were 3 players with 200+ strikeouts. Yoan Moncada, Giancarlo Stanton and Joey Gallo each took 200+ Ks. Nevertheless, the next season, no hitters reached 200 Ks. And the 2020 season was a shortened one.

Finally, in 2021, Joey Gallo and Matt Chapman each had 200+ strikeouts. In 2022, Kyle Schwarber blasted 46 home runs for the Phillies. But he was struck out 200 times. Last season, Kyle Schwarber again blasted 40+ home runs and had 200+ strikeouts. And there were 2 other players who were struck out more than 200 times.

From 2010 to 2023, on average, at least 1 hitter finished a season with 200+ strikeouts. While seeing George Kell’s number of strikeouts, it’s really hard to imagine that a player can spend 10+ seasons in the majors with just 200+ strikeouts. In particular, over the last 14 seasons, we normally see that there are hitters with 200+ strikeouts in a single season. And there was a shortened season.