Bang the Drum Slowly

Johan Santana recorded his 1000th career strikeout Tuesday night, becoming the sixth Twin to reach that milestone. Any guesses at the other 5? I'll provide the answer at the end of this post.

From the MLB.com recap of the game:

Dominant outings aren't anything new for Santana, but against the Red Sox, the Twins ace was historic. Santana became the sixth Twins pitcher to record 1,000 strikeouts. His was the second fastest to the number, accomplishing the feat in his 198th appearance. Bert Blyleven is the only Twins pitcher to reach 1,000 career K's faster, as he did it in his 170th outing.

Bad grammar aside (I'm assuming she meant to say "he was the second fastest to reach the number"), why does it make sense to use appearances to judge who K'd 1000 batters first? It's not Johan's fault that the Twins used him in relief 76 times between 2000 and 2003, compared to 42 starts. Blyleven had a grand total of 2 relief appearances, both during his rookie year.

It took Santana 948 innings to get to the 1000 strikeout milestone, while it took Blyleven 1160 innings. In other words, Santana struck out 1.05 batters/inning (9.49/9IP), while Blyleven struck out .862/inning (7.76/9IP).

Santana is starting to creep up the lists of all-time Twins records, both single-season, and career. I think Walter Johnson's single-season ERA records are safe, though. (Why can't baseball-reference.com sepearate Senators and Twins stats?)

One ridiculous stat difference I noticed while researching this is complete games (CGs). Blyleven had 25 CGs in 1973, and he averaged 17 Cgs between 1971 & 1978. To put this in perspective, Roy Halladay led the AL with 5 CGs last year. The last time pitcher had at least 10 CGs was Randy Johnson in 1999 (12).


Twins Strikeout Leaders
Bert Blyleven 2035
Camilo Pascual 1885
Jim Kaat 1851
Brad Radke 1384
Frank Viola 1214
Johan Santana 1005