3 Takeaways from an historic and important Atlanta Braves win
In a 162 game season, most games won’t have any particular significance to them. For the Atlanta Braves, though, Friday night’s win was definitely one to remember.
First thing done this morning: checked the Baseball-Reference.com play index to learn how many times the Atlanta Braves have ever had a game in which they struck out more than 20 times.
Surely, over the decades this club have been playing baseball, there’s been a few, right?
The answer? None. Hmmm…. obviously, the database hasn’t been updated with last night’s games yet.
Okay… let’s back it down a bit. How about 18 or more? Ah… there are some hits on that query.
18+ has happened to the Braves on 11 occasions. Here’s the highlights of the most recent incidents:
- April 26, 2013. 9 innings vs. Detroit. Anibal Sanchez (17) and Bruce Rondon (1) combined to K 18 Braves in a 10-0 drubbing… a team that had Dan Uggla, both Uptons, Evan Gattis, and Juan Francisco in the lineup (among others, of course).
- August 17, 2013. Same year. 15 innings vs. the Nationals. Stephen Strasburg (1), Tanner Roark (6), and their entire bullpen combined to strike out 20 Braves while beating our team 8-7 – despite Atlanta scoring 3 times in the 8th and 9th just to get the game to extra innings.
Then there was last night.
Friday night at Citi Field dwarfed both of these games in terms of plate flailing. Yet it was a game that Atlanta needed to know they could win.
Jacob deGrom was masterful… striking out 13 Braves over 7 innings. Over the following 7 innings, 7 members of their bullpen combined to strike out another 13 hitters.
Twenty-six strikeouts total
Back to the play index… searching for all games since roughly 1920 in which any team K’d more than 20 times.
- 20+ strikeouts have occurred on 72 occasions… well, 73 now.
- A team has K’d 21 times during 15 games
- 22 strikeouts: 7 times.
- 23 strikeouts: 4 times
- 24 strikeouts: 7 times
- 25? Never.
- 26? Last night was the 5th time ever.
- No team has ever recorded more than 26 strikeouts in a single game.
One of these 26K games was a Win… Milwaukee defeated the Anaheim Angels 1-0 in 17 innings in 2004.
The California Angels were on the short end on one of these back in 1971… losing 1-0 to Oakland in 20 innings with the teams combining for 43 K overall… that appears to be the record for total strikeouts in a single game.
The Brewers were also involved in one of these in 2017… losing 2-1 to the Dodgers in just 12 innings (Clayton Kershaw had 14 of them). Those teams combined for 42 overall.
2017 also saw the Cubs have a 26K game, losing 5-4 to the Yankees.
So the Braves struck out the most times ever… combining with the Mets to get within 3 of the all-time record for both teams… and they still won the game.
You bet we have some notable takeaways from this contest…