Max Scherzer joins exclusive 20-strikeout club with dominant effort

10:47 PM ET

Welcome to the club, Max Scherzer.

It’s a small one: Roger Clemens (who did it twice), Kerry Wood, Randy Johnson and, now, Scherzer. The four men who have struck out 20 batters in a major league game in nine innings.

Scherzer was so dominant early on in this game, his fastball moving, the Detroit Tigers swinging through it, that those watching it started thinking about this way too early. He had eight strikeouts through three innings, and it looked like one of those nights where everything clicks for Scherzer. After all, he had two no-hitters last year, striking out 17 in one of those. He had another game in which he allowed one hit and struck out 16.

He had 13 through six innings. It was possible. He was sitting at 77 pitches, not too high of a count. That’s the key. Just the other day I speculated why nobody had challenged the 20-strikeout record since Johnson did it in 2001, even though there are more strikeouts than ever. The main reason? Pitch counts. It takes a lot of pitches to strike out 20 batters. In Clemens’ second 20-strikeout game, he threw 151 pitches.

But Scherzer was dominant and efficient. Six of those first 13 strikeouts came on three pitches. In the seventh, with two on and one out, he struck out James McCann on three pitches and then got Anthony Gose swinging on a 2-2 changeup. In the eighth, he struck out the side on 13 pitches — all looking, freezing Ian Kinsler on a 96 mph heater down …

continue reading in source espn.go.com