If you had to pick which player would be the first to strike out five times in a game this season “someone on the Orioles” would be a pretty good guess.
Mark Reynolds led the league with more than 200 strikeouts in each of the past three seasons and leads the AL with 170 this year, but surprisingly he’s never whiffed five times in a game and instead it was teammate Chris Davis who took a Platinum Sombrero today against the Yankees.
Of course, Davis’ career strikeout rate of one every 3.1 plate appearances is nearly identical to Reynolds’ one every 3.0 plate appearances. Davis just hasn’t had the same number of chances because he hasn’t hit as well as Reynolds.
In whiffing five times today Davis became the first player with a five-strikeout game since Ryan Howard on August 24 of last season. He had a sixth at-bat in the 11th inning and fell behind in the count 0-2, but grounded out to second base with the bases loaded.
Sammy Sosa is the all-time leader with four such games, followed by Ray Lankford with three and nine different players with two apiece (including active hitters Jim Thome, Mark Teixeira, Alex Rios, and Andruw Jones).
Congrats!
