The Pastime

Much as I did with the home run leaders for each state, I decided to compile a list of the strikeout leaders born in each state. For good measure, I included Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. I also tossed in a few foreign countries that have produced a fair numbers of major league arms.

Without further ado, here’s the list:

Only six states have no active pitchers — Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.

Last season, Mike Mussina passed Christy Mathewson to take the all-time lead among Pennsylvania natives.

The closest pitchers to taking over a lead, either among active pitchers or all-time:

- A.J. Burnett needs 292 to overtake Dizzy Dean for the all-time mark in Arkansas.

- Roy Oswalt only has to strike out 88 this season to pass Claude Passeau in Mississippi to own the all-time record there.

- Tom Glavine will pass Hall-of-Famer Tim Keefe in Massachussetts (all-time) with 40 more K’s.

- Chris Carpenter is 330 strikeouts behind New Hamspire all-time leader Mike Flanagan.

- Brandon Webb is 56 strikeouts behind active Kentucky leader Paul Byrd.

- Justin Duchscherer (221) and Brandon Claussen (228) will fight it out this season to take control of the active South Dakota mark.

- The state of Wisconsin has a three-person scramble to take over the active mark. With Kris Benson (787) on the DL, Jarrod Washburn (802) will have to keep ahead of Bob Wickman (748).

- Venezuela is going to be interesting. The all-time mark of 1330 is within reach of Freddy Garcia (1202), Johan Santana (1246) and Kelvim Escobar (1245). Carlos Zambrano (865) will eventually play into the mix, too.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 2:38 am and is filed under General Baseball, Stats, History, Trivia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.