This Pitcher Has the Most Strikeouts in History

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jun 27, 11:29AM EDT · Published Jun 26, 10:30AM EDT

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This Pitcher Has the Most Strikeouts in History — © EHStock / iStock via Getty Images

There are several ways to get a player out in baseball. Only one always pits one player against another. Some pitches are as fast as 100 MPG. These are thrown over a distance of 60 feet, 6 inches from a pitcher’s mound that is 10 inches higher than the field. The pitch reaches the plate in about .4 seconds.

The greatest pitchers almost always have more than one pitch in their arsenals, which is a means of challenging the batter’s reaction.

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There are several ways a pitcher’s skill is measured. One is strikeouts in a game. At 21 strikeouts, this record is held by Tom Cheney of the Washington Senators and was set in a game against the Baltimore Orioles on September 12, 1982. The game was 16 innings long.

Another yardstick of skill is the “perfect game.” In these, no batter from the opposing team reaches base over the course of 9 innings, or more. The term was first used in 1908. These are rare and happen only every few years.

Yet another measure used is games won per season. The last man to win over 30 of these was Denny McClain in 1968. His record was 31-6. The last time this feat had been accomplished was 34 years before.

One gold standard of pitching is career strikeouts by a single pitcher. This record is held by Nolan Ryan at 5,714. He set the record over 5,383 innings pitched, His career lasted 27 years from 1966 until 1993,

Nolan Ryan was born on January 31, 1947, he is currently 75 years old. He played for four teams. In 1979, he was the first million player when he signed a four year deal with the Houston Astros in 1979.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.