Urias ends season needing one more K

Phil Gurnee ♦ September 30, 2016 ♦ 1 Comment

to tie Ralph Branca for most strikeouts for a Dodger by the end of their age 19 baseball season.

Obviously,  Julio Urias holds the LAD record for most strikeouts for a LAD by the end of his 19-year-old baseball season, having passed Joe Moeller months ago. Joe had 46 and his record stood since 1964.

Looking to next year, if Urias is healthy he’ll have no problem knocking Clayton Kershaw off the list. Clayton had 100 K’s by the end of his 20-year-old baseball season. Fernando is however, the gold standard, and Julio will need to strike out 112 hitters next year to tie Fernando. That seems doable, but with baseball you just never know.

So with the LAD era conquered we looked to bigger pastures and took on the entire Dodger history, and sadly Julio is just one shy of being on top of that mountain.

Ralph had 85, Julio ends the year with 84, and Don Drysdale had 55. Ralph had the benefit of being called up at age 18 during the war years in 44/45. It also took Ralph 154 innings to get those 85 strikeouts, while Julio did it in 77.

I probably won’t be shy about adding what Julio does in the postseason to get him past 85 K’s. He is a big reason the Dodgers will be playing in October.

As usual thanks to Baseball Reference for being the source of all this information, and their excellent searchable play index.  Any article I’ve written that involves baseball stats, you can bet www.baseballreference.com is the source.

Seems safe to say that Julio Urias is the best nineteen-year-old the Dodgers have had in their history since HOF Don Drysdale. Being the best 20-year-old is a whole different story with plenty of competition.

As noted in the Erv Palica story he’s going to be joining some rarefied air next year if he’s able to pitch as a baseball season twenty-year-old.