About those 53 strikeouts in 36 innings…

The alternate headline was “Stupid Sexy Strikeouts.”

If you were glued to your TV for the last four games the San Francisco Giants played, then you saw a lot of strikeouts. Like, a lot of them. And the good kind where they were pitching them rather than swinging into them. You might’ve seen the relevant graphic that the Giants set a franchise record for most strikeouts in a four game series…

The previous had come in 2019 when they struck out 51 Rockies in a four game series also at Oracle Park. Well, I wanted to take a look at this accomplishment a bit more.

Thanks to Stathead, it looks as though this is the 1 of only 8 times in the history of the franchise that the team has struck out 50 or more in a 4-game span (minimum 36 innings). The earliest occurrence wasn’t in 2009 or 2010 or even last century. Back in July 2013 — remember that bad season which only gave us the Marco Scutaro Rain Globe? — the Giants struck out 31 Dodgers in a three game series and then 19 Mets in a 16 inning game.

And that’s the thing. Not only was this series special because of the 53 strikeouts in a single series, the Giants didn’t need extra innings to add to the tally. It’s the only 4-game span without extra innings where they struck out 50 or more. Even the last time they brutalized the Rockies for those 51 strikeouts in 2019, there was an 18 inning game in there. That still holds the record for the longest game of the head-to-head matchup and is tied for the longest game in Oracle Park history. Sami’s recap of it is a doozy.

Those games were started by Derek Holland, Madison Bumgarner, Drew Pomeranz, and Jeff Samardzija, a full-on rebuild rotation as one is likely to recall. This time around, the Giants had a rotation that was nearly at full strength and featured some truly stellar work. I’m an ardent supporter of Logan Webb, but lately I can’t stop staring at Hayden Birdsong…

And, of course, that’s not to take Blake Snell’s incredible start for granted.

After all, it might bring back a top 10 prospect at the trade deadline!

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention De La Salle’s Kyle Harrison, who matched his career high with 11 strikeouts. Development isn’t linear, and the idea that he might not net out as an ace starter is hardly damning. He looks like a legit starter to me!

This weekend was an accomplishment we might’ve expected from the championship days with Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, Jonathan Sanchez, and even Barry Zito; and, you’d think maybe in the whole history of the franchise there’d be spans that come close, too, but there are really just 226 instances of a five game stretch — a whole turn of the rotation — where the team struck out 50 or more and the list tilts largely towards the Oracle Park era and especially 2009 and beyond.

There are 19 pre-2009 spans of 50+ strikeouts in a five game span: 1964 (x3), 1966, 1975 (x5; though, it’s really an overlapping span from August 27-September 2), 1997 (x3; but again, overlapping, so it’s September 4-11), 2006, 2008 (x6, consisting of two stretches: Jun 27-July 5 and July 25-29). From 2009-2014, the championship era rotation racked up 58 occurrences of 50+ strikeouts in a five game span.

I’m only using the five game example because those earlier rotations were stacked, but just to show how much the definition has stacked change… of those 58 occurrences from 2009-2014, the most strikeouts the Giants ever pitched in a five game stretch was 59 in 52 innings (July 3-8, 2013 overlapped by July 6-10, 2013). In the last loss against the Dodgers, Giants pitching still struck out 7, meaning that the 60 strikeouts is more than Lincecum & co. ever managed in a five game series and it’s simply the most strikeouts in that same stretch in franchise history.

There’s no mystery behind any of this. Technology and data scouting are such that pitchers are able to repeat their deliveries and disguise their pitches better and it’s simply the case that pitchers are better at striking out hitters than ever before. The strikeout rates during the Giants’ pitching heyday:

2009 – 18%
2010 – 18.5%
2011 – 18.6%
2012 – 19.8%
2013 – 19.9%
2014 – 20.4%

And here’s how it’s gone since 2019:

2019 – 23%
2020 – 23.4%
2021 – 23.2%
2022 – 22.4%
2023 – 22.7%
2024 – 22.3%

Yes, a 38.4% strikeout rate for the weekend is above average. That just goes to show we witnessed a bit of Giants history this weekend, which is not something you might’ve expected in a season that feels “We’re So Back It’s Over.” For the Colorado Rockies, it wasn’t anything new. There have been 41 occurrences in their franchise history where they’ve struck out 50+ times in a four game span, but with all due respect, I’m not going to sift through the list to find out which were discrete series.

A scheduled day-night doubleheader. A rock concert. Tyler Fitzgerald doing a Barry Bonds impression. An historic stretch of Giants pitching racking up Ks. It really was a good time.