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Consecutive Games With Less Than 4 Ks to Start a Career

Posted by Raphy on May 26, 2010

This past Saturday, Aramis Ramirez struck out 4 times for the Cubs. This in itself in not all that significant. However, as David from  Another Cubs Blog mentioned to me, it was the first time in Ramirez's career that he had a 4 strikeout game. Ramirez had 5414 AB going into the game and David and I thought it might be interesting to take a look at players who have started their career with longer streaks. There have been a lot of players, so lets limit  our discussion only to active players with longer streaks. (To find this I used the Batting streak finder to find all streaks of games with SO<=3. I then eliminated those players who were not active or whose streaks did not start their careers. Darin Erstad was the only player I wasn't sure about.)

Here are the active players with the most consecutive games (at least 1 PA) to start their careers with less than 4 strikeouts (though Monday's games).

Rk Strk Start End Games AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SO BB SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS Tm
1 Johnny Damon 1995-08-12 2010-05-23 2144 8563 1507 2470 463 96 210 1014 1075 892 374 96 .288 .356 .439 .794 KCR-OAK-BOS-NYY-DET
2 Chipper Jones 1993-09-14 2009-05-26 2052 7457 1398 2315 456 36 412 1390 1161 1268 139 44 .310 .408 .547 .955 ATL
3 Jason Kendall 1996-04-01 2010-05-23 2003 7345 1000 2127 384 35 75 715 658 696 180 84 .290 .368 .382 .750 PIT-OAK-CHC-MIL-KCR
4 Miguel Tejada 1997-08-27 2010-05-23 1906 7486 1133 2158 429 23 289 1205 961 511 78 34 .288 .340 .468 .808 OAK-BAL-HOU
5 Orlando Cabrera 1997-09-03 2010-05-24 1751 6789 897 1866 418 32 117 782 655 480 201 48 .275 .322 .398 .719 MON-BOS-LAA-CHW-OAK-MIN-CIN
6 Darin Erstad 1996-06-14 2009-10-04 1611 6024 908 1697 316 33 124 699 939 475 179 58 .282 .336 .407 .743 CAL-ANA-LAA-CHW-HOU
7 Ivan Rodriguez 1991-06-20 2003-05-29 1505 5806 874 1760 349 29 221 853 788 328 88 41 .303 .342 .487 .829 TEX-FLA
8 Placido Polanco 1998-07-03 2010-05-22 1481 5682 852 1722 289 30 95 600 407 322 73 30 .303 .347 .415 .762 STL-PHI-DET
9 Ichiro Suzuki 2001-04-02 2010-05-23 1469 6281 994 2094 236 70 85 524 614 425 352 85 .333 .378 .434 .812 SEA
10 Juan Pierre 2000-08-08 2010-05-24 1459 5710 822 1710 204 79 13 393 348 348 476 159 .299 .347 .370 .716 COL-FLA-CHC-LAD-CHW
11 Aramis Ramirez 1998-05-26 2010-05-20 1448 5414 747 1528 322 17 268 966 835 438 15 14 .282 .341 .496 .837 PIT-CHC
12 Albert Pujols 2001-04-02 2010-05-23 1440 5311 1096 1767 400 14 374 1141 594 842 64 31 .333 .427 .625 1.051 STL
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 5/26/2010.

Other than Ramirez, all the players who have streaks into May 2010 have active streaks. These players have never struck out four times in one game.

Related posts:

    Most consecutive games with an RBI, start of career
    Consecutive Appearances of at Most 1 Inning to Start a Career
    Consecutive Apperances With at Least a Strikeout Per Inning to Start a Career
    Most Consecutive Appearances in a Loss to Start a Career
    2 or More Streaks of 5 Consecutive Games with a Home run

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 11:38 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

8 Responses to “Consecutive Games With Less Than 4 Ks to Start a Career”

  1. EDWARD B. ALMADA Says:
    May 26th, 2010 at 2:04 pm

    Your search for most games without having struckout 4 times in a game, was very helpful and interesting. Going a little deeper, Johnny Damon's case is very relevant because even tough it has never happened to him during the regular season, he has 2 games in postseason with 4 Ks: 10/12/1004 (LCS) and 10/11/2009 (LDS).

  2. David Says:
    May 26th, 2010 at 2:26 pm

    That's really interesting, Edward, What are the odds you could go that long without 4 K's in a regular season game and then have it happen twice in a playoff game?

  3. Raphy Says:
    May 26th, 2010 at 3:13 pm

    Edward -Awesome find. It goes even further than that:

    In post-season history only 6 players have struck out 4 times in a game on two occasions. 2 of those 6 players (Johnny Damon and Rafael Palmeiro) never stuck out 4 times in any regular season game.

  4. DoubleDiamond Says:
    May 26th, 2010 at 6:21 pm

    Polanco just whiffed in his first at-bat tonight. The way the Phillies have been playing the last few days, it wouldn't surprise me to have him to strike out three more times! But after a 1-2-3 top of the first in Shea Citi, I think the Phillies will have a perfect game pitched against them, which will only bring his #2 spot up to the plate twice.

    (I couldn't resist doing something to bring in the "strke" font.)

  5. BSK Says:
    May 26th, 2010 at 9:19 pm

    It's also interesting because Damon, who has primarily batted leadoff, generally gets more ABs per game, giving him a better chance of racking up 4Ks. Even more impressive.

  6. nightfly Says:
    May 27th, 2010 at 10:19 am

    Didn't Bill Buckner never strike out three times in a game? I know this is four times, but I thought the tougher accomplishment would be noteworthy. According to PI, since 1970 the longest streak is 2483. I'm not a subscriber so I don't know who it is for certain - it could be Buckner, and he struck out fewer than 500 times in nearly 2500 career games so it's not unreasonable. There's also a streak of 2197.

  7. Djibouti Says:
    May 27th, 2010 at 11:26 am

    Interesting list. I don't know why but I always thought of Pudge as a SO guy.

    Although it may not change the order in any way, wouldn't a more telling list be a streak of games with a minimum of 4 PA?

  8. Kahuna Tuna Says:
    May 27th, 2010 at 1:35 pm

    Didn't Bill Buckner never strike out three times in a game?

    That's right. Retrosheet says he struck out twice in a game 45 times, but never three times. Buckner appeared in 2,517 regular-season major-league games.

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