Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Left-handed Firemen

Relievers have traditionally been called firemen throughout baseball history (or at least the part featuring relief pitching), but the image that generally comes to mind is of a righty bearing down and blowing 100mph fastballs by hitters. What about lefty relievers that struck out a ton of guys?

The search parameters are from 1957-2007 so we can use retrosheet data (unavailable prior to 1957) to filter out the guys like Mike Remlinger in 1997, who struck out 145 batters but had 12 starts inflating his numbers. And, yes, I suppose I should use strikeouts per innings pitched to be technical, but you'll just have to live with that. Without further ado, here's the list of the top ten lefty relief strikeout producers:
  1. John Hiller, 1974, 134 K
  2. Mark Davis, 1985, 128
  3. Billy Wagner, 1999, 124
  4. John Hiller, 1973, 124
  5. Mitch Williams, 1987, 123
  6. B.J. Ryan, 2004, 122
  7. Paul Assenmacher, 1991, 117
  8. Bill Henry, 1959, 115
  9. Billy McCool, 1965, 113
  10. Willie Hernandez, 1984, 112

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