Pitchers Grabbing Headlines


Wednesday night's big stories surround pitchers: The Nationals' Max Scherzer (above), tied the major league record for strikeouts in a nine-inning game with 20. He joins Roger Clemens (Red Sox, 1986 and Red Sox, 1996), Kerry Wood (Cubs, 1998) and Randy Johnson (Diamondbacks, 2001) in this ultra-select circle. How good was his command against the Tigers? Out of his 119 pitches, 96 were strikes! And of the four who've struck out 20, only Max and Johnson have also thrown no-hitters. And Scherzer's 119 pitches gave him the lowest total of those to whiff 20.
Trivia buffs, circle the name of Justin Upton -- he was strikeout victim number-20 in Max's gem.
Now on to our silver medalist: Mets fireballer Noah Syndergaard (below) became the just the second pitcher in club history to belt two home runs in a game. He accounted for all the scoring in New York's 4-3 win over the Dodgers. Ironically, yesterday (May 11th) was the birthday of the only other Met pitcher do so -- Walt Terrell. It's been an interesting few days for Mets hurlers. In the league without a DH, 40-something Bartolo Colon made history as the oldest player ever to hit his first big league homer -- and now Syndergaard one-ups him in the slugging category.


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