Max Scherzer Headlines a Big Weekend For Strikeout Feats

Even by the standards of his recent, injury-marred seasons, Max Scherzer’s 2026 campaign has been a rough one. The 42-year-old righty has made two trips to the injured list, and through the end of July had taken just seven starts and allowed more than a run per inning. Even on a Blue Jays team destined to be retooled ahead of the trade deadline, he was clearly in no shape to be any contender’s hired gun. Nonetheless, Scherzer’s last two starts have been bright spots, and on Saturday evening, he notched career strikeout 3,516, officially moving him into the all-time top 10.

Scherzer wasn’t the only pitcher who reached a strikeout milestone this weekend. Aaron Nola, who started for the Phillies opposite Scherzer at Citizens Bank Park, collected his 2,000th career strikeout. Elsewhere, in a matchup that pitted the third- and fourth-ranked pitchers on the active strikeouts leaderboard, namely Chris Sale and Gerrit Cole, the latter notched his 1,000th strikeout since joining the Yankees. Then on Sunday, Jacob Misiorowski became the first pitcher to notch his 200th strikeout of the season.

I’ll get to all of those pitchers, but first Scherzer. After holding Philadelphia scoreless through five innings while scattering three hits and striking out three, he returned for the sixth inning and faced leadoff hitter Kyle Schwarber, who entered the day as the major league leader in strikeouts (172) and who on June 10 in Toronto was the victim of Scherzer’s career strikeout no. 3,500. That outing was the only major league start Scherzer took between April 24 and July 27; first he was sidelined by a combination of forearm tendinitis and left ankle inflammation, and then — after lasting just 3.1 innings against the Phillies while being tagged for five runs — a bout of back spasms. He was in much better shape on Saturday evening, and in his previous two plate appearances against Schwarber had limited the slugger to a groundout and an infield single.

Scherzer missed with an up-and-away fastball, then got Schwarber to chase a pair of pitches outside the zone, both of which he fouled off. Schwarber didn’t offer at either a slider inside or a curveball in the dirt, running the count full before Scherzer delivered a 94.3-mph four-seamer right at the bottom edge of the zone. Schwarber checked his swing, but home plate umpire Brennan Miller rung him up for strike three:

With the strikeout, Scherzer officially passed Walter Johnson for 10th on the all-time list. Johnson, who pitched for the Washington Senators from 1907–27, surpassed Cy Young for the lead in strikeouts in 1921, and held the record until April 27, 1983, when the Astros’ Nolan Ryan surpassed him. At that time, Johnson was credited with “only” 3,508 strikeouts; the Elias Sports Bureau, which serves as the official statistician of Major League Baseball, has since revised his total to 3,515, though FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, and Retrosheet all recognize his total as 3,509.

Ryan, who entered the 1983 season with 3,494 strikeouts, wasn’t the only pitcher to surpass Johnson that summer. Owing to his being sidelined due to injuries a couple of times, he was overtaken by Steve Carlton, who began the season with 3,434 strikeouts, 60 fewer than Ryan. For awhile, the two were neck-and-neck, with Sean Smith (a.k.a Rally Monkey at Baseball Projection) counting 13 lead changes between the two pitchers that summer. Carlton held the edge at season’s end, 3,709 to 3,677, with Gaylord Perry also surpassing Johnson to finish with 3,534. Ryan reclaimed the lead for good the next year and still holds it with an out-of-reach 5,714 strikeouts, and with Scherzer’s accomplishment, Johnson has now been bumped out of the top 10 completely; Justin Verlander snuck into the top 10 on May 25 last season, surpassing Greg Maddux (3,371), then passed Johnson’s Elias-approved total on August 26.

Here’s how the leaderboard looks now:

I’ve also included raw strikeout rate and our K%+ index stat — which tells you how far above or below the adjusted league average rate a pitcher is, with 100 being average, à la wRC+ — since the increase in strikeouts over time has made racking up these milestones more commonplace. While Johnson has been surpassed by 10 pitchers at this point, in the context of his environment, he was punching out batters more often than all of them except Ryan and Randy Johnson. Scherzer’s K%+ is tied with Curt Schilling’s for sixth-best among this group; note that Saturday’s outing left him one inning short of 3,000, but he’s close in strikeout total to guys like Perry and Don Sutton, who piled up at least 2,000 more innings.

After the game, Scherzer sounded particularly moved to join such esteemed company. “You start mentioning the top 10 all-time strikeouts, man, there are some really big-time names there,” he said. “To now be a part of that group, it’s special.”

Scherzer’s outing didn’t end on the highest of notes. After striking out Schwarber, he served up solo homers to both Trea Turner and Bryce Harper, turning what had been a 2-0 lead into a tie game and costing him a shot at what would have been his first win since March 31, and his 223rd overall. The Blue Jays did prevail in 11 innings, 7-5, and Scherzer lowered his ERA to 7.25 (with a 6.89 FIP); that’s still an unsightly mark, but it’s better than the 9.49 ERA he had before his last two starts.

As for Nola, in the top of the second inning, he struck out the Blue Jays’ Brandon Valenzuela for the 2,000th strikeout of his 12-year career. The 33-year-old righty ranks eighth in strikeouts among active pitchers, though his season has not gone well, as he’s been cuffed for a 5.47 ERA and a 5.09 FIP. His current ERA represents an improvement from last year’s even uglier 6.01 mark, but his FIP has risen from last year’s 4.58, as he’s served up a major league-leading 2.09 homers per nine.

Nola’s Saturday evening didn’t end on the highest of notes, either. Leading off the top of the sixth inning, before Scherzer’s spotlight moment, Jesús Sánchez smashed a 104.8-mph one-hopper that hit the Phillies’ righty on his right leg, forcing him from the game. Reports say he suffered a right knee contusion, but it’s not believed to be a particularly serious injury.

As for Sale and Cole, they squared off in a marquee matchup on Saturday afternoon at Yankee Stadium, one that followed the Yankees’ Old Timers’ Day festivities. Through the first four innings, Cole allowed only two hits, a ground-rule double by Ozzie Albies in the second inning and a single by Drake Baldwin in the third; both were stranded. The Yankees collected three hits against Sale during that span, with a one-out double by Trent Grisham and a two-out single by Spencer Jones producing the game’s first run in the bottom of the second. Cole surrendered four straight hits to open the fifth, starting with back-to-back doubles by Mauricio Dubón and Mike Yastrzemski. The Braves took a 2-1 lead, but Cole recovered to sandwich strikeouts of Baldwin and Matt Olson around a lineout by Ronald Acuña Jr. The strikeout of Olson — looking at a 98.8-mph four-seam fastball on the outside edge of the plate — was the 1,000th since Cole joined the Yankees in December 2019. He reached the mark in 139 games and 837.2 innings, surpassing CC Sabathia (who needed 162 games to reach the mark after joining the Yankees for the 2009 season) and Roger Clemens (who needed 1,087.1 innings after joining the Yankees in 1999).

The Yankees retook the lead against Sale in the bottom of the fifth with a leadoff walk by George Lombard Jr., a triple by Jones, a triple by Jones, and then a run-scoring balk that not only led to the ejection of Braves manager Walt Weiss, but left Sale fuming to the point that he was ejected before Sunday’s game. Both pitchers put up zeroes in the sixth, and Cole returned to record a scoreless seventh as well, capping his afternoon with three-pitch strikeouts of Austin Riley (swinging at a 96.7-mph four-seamer well above the strike zone) and Jim Jarvis (looking at a 97-mph four-seamer on the inner edge of the plate). He left having thrown just 82 pitches, striking out nine without a walk, and with six hits and two runs allowed in a 5-4 win, career victory no. 159.

The start was Cole’s seventh straight allowing three or fewer runs; prior to that, in his return from March 2025 Tommy John surgery, he allowed three or fewer runs in just four out of seven starts. He had a 4.06 ERA, 4.57 FIP, 1.67 HR/9, and 21.3% strikeout rate in those first seven turns, through the end of June. Since then, he’s put up a 2.72 ERA and 2.32 FIP, cutting that homer rate in half and pushing his strikeout rate to 31.4%, with an impressive 4.1% walk rate to boot.

It’s safe to say that the 35-year-old righty is mostly back. Cole’s average four-seam fastball velocity of 96.9 mph is his best since 2022. Batters are hitting .190 and slugging .333 against it while whiffing on 21.9% of their swings. On the other hand, they’ve been teeing off on his knuckle curve, batting .294, slugging .559, and whiffing on just 19.7% of their swings against the pitch; by comparison, in his 17-start 2024 season, they were similarly helpless against the four-seamer while hitting just .209 with a .239 slugging percentage and 30.1% whiff rate against the knuckle curve.

Cole now has 2,338 strikeouts. Can he get to 3,000? I asked Dan Szymborski for a ZiPS projection even while knowing the odds wouldn’t look great considering Cole has made just 31 starts over the past three seasons. ZiPS gives him just 22% odds right now, projecting him to finish with 2,727, along with a 189-107 record, 51.5 bWAR, and 43.0 S-JAWS (he’s at 45.1 BWAR and 39.8 JAWS right now). Right now, those don’t look like Hall of Fame-caliber numbers, as his S-JAWS is far below Sabathia (50.8) and current candidates Andy Pettitte (47.2) and Félix Hernández (44.1), but if he can continue this current run, those projections will improve.

Though he wound up on the short end of Saturday’s matchup, the 37-year-old Sale is in the midst of an even stronger season, with a better outlook for Cooperstown. His 2.20 ERA currently ranks second in the National League behind Misiorowski’s 1.76, and it’s even better than the 2.38 mark with which Sale led the league in 2024, when he finally won a Cy Young award. His 2.40 FIP isn’t as good as that season’s league-low 2.09, but it’s also second only to The Miz’s 2.17. Sale is in the same boat with regards to his 30.6% strikeout rate: down a bit from his 32.1% 2024 mark, but still second only to Misiorowski, albeit by a full 10 percentage points.

With 2,730 strikeouts (in just 2,207 innings), Sale ranks 27th all-time, and according to ZiPS, he projects to surpass Frank Tanana (2,773) by the end of the season, finishing at 2,787. ZiPS gives him a 78% chance of reaching 3,000, and projects him to finish with 3,211, which would rank 14th. ZiPS also projects Sale to finish with a 190-114 record and 71.4 bWAR (he has 61.3), which would push his current 51.5 S-JAWS to 56.6 — just 0.2 below the standard and 0.6 below 2019 inductee Roy Halladay. Even now, having already surpassed Sabathia’s S-JAWS, he looks fit for Cooperstown.

Here’s a look at the active top 10 in strikeouts, along with their K%+:

The 2,000-strikeout milestone doesn’t often catch our attention, but it’s worth noting that Kevin Gausman and Sonny Gray preceded Nola in reaching it this season, and by the end of September, both Jacob deGrom and Nola’s teammate Zack Wheeler should reach it as well; our Depth Charts project the latter to add 55 more strikeouts this year. I didn’t ask Dan for odds on any of these guys reaching 3,000 because of their ages and distances form the milestone, but suffice it to say they’re south of Cole’s chances.

And I didn’t dare ask about the 24-year-old Misiorowski, who has absolutely dominated hitters this season while setting velocity records left and right. His third-inning strikeout of the Twins’ Alan Roden on Sunday in Milwaukee — on a 101.7-mph four-seamer against which the right fielder tried to check his swing — marked his 200th strikeout of the season.

It took just 129.1 innings for Misiorowski to reach that milestone, the second-fewest of any pitcher behind only Spencer Strider in 2023 (123.1) according to MLB.com’s Sarah Langs. Not only does his 40.6% strikeout rate lead the league, it’s the second highest of any ERA qualifier in any season, behind only Shane Bieber in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season (41.1%), during which the then-Cleveland righty thew only 77.1 innings, compared to Misiorowski’s 133. The surrounding league context is doing a lot of work with regards to both of those rates. Misiorowski has the edge on Bieber in K%+, 186 to 177, but even in a Wild Card-era top 20, the former ranks just 11th and the latter 19th, with the 1999 version of Pedro Martínez first at 239 (with a 34.8% rate). That top 10 also includes Pedro Martínez’s 2000 and ’02 seasons, six from Randy Johnson, and Kerry Wood’s 1998. All of those guys were far ahead of their time in this department, and we can only hope that Misiorowski’s arm holds up well enough that we don’t speak of him as a what-might-have-been marvel like Wood.

All of which brings us back to Scherzer. It not only takes impressive skill but remarkable staying power to climb into the top 10 in strikeouts. While he hasn’t announced whether this will be his final season, if this is his last major accomplishment, it’s a pretty damn good one.

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