Alex Wood – Strikeout King?

Phil Gurnee ♦ May 26, 2016 ♦ Leave a comment

When Alex Wood struck out thirteen of his eighteen outs in his last start on 5/21/2016 it seemed to get little fanfare. Probably because the Dodgers not only lost the game, but Wood only managed to get eighteen outs.

Yet for Wood it was his best strikeout performance of his career. Only four times has Alex Wood managed double-digit strikeouts, and his thirteen on May 21st was his high water mark. However I don’t want to get carried away and say this was his best game. Far from it, as he has had twelve games with a higher game score, including three with the LAD.

Yet this game was historical for the Los Angeles Dodgers.  The LAD have quite a history of strikeout pitchers from Sandy Koufax to Clayton Kershaw with Drysdale/Sutton/Nomo/Fernando in between, but it is Alex Wood who currently sits on top of one particular leaderboard.

Using the criteria of getting at least fifteen outs (5 IP) Alex Wood now holds the best Strike out to Out percentage for the LAD.

Scott Kazmir was so impressed with what Wood did that he almost replicated the performance last night (05/25/17). A game that I was able to attend thanks to TBLA blogger Craig Minami who extended a ticket to me. The game last night was notable for cumulative strikeouts. Twenty Seven Dodgers/Reds struck out last night, one of the highest one game total for both teams in the LAD era.

But I digress, back to Alex Wood. Below is the leaderboard for LAD with at least 15 outs and strike out to out percentage > 60%.  I used Baseball reference for this information.

LAD pitchers with at least five innings pitched and at least ten strikeouts

To be sure, striking out eighteen in a nine inning game is way more impressive as Ramon Martinez and Sandy Koufax have done. Still Alex Wood deserves his day in the sun along with all these celebrated LAD hurlers, and here it is.

The STOP column on the far right stands for “Strikeout to out percentage”.