Strikeout king: Rondon has become one of baseball’s best

Among all the big names on the cruising Cubs — Kris Bryant, Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester, Anthony Rizzo, Ben Zobrist, Jason Heyward, even manager Joe Maddon, and so on — the name that never really gets talked about is the former Rule 5 pick who has quietly been having a dominant season at the back of the bullpen: Hector Rondon, who has allowed two earned runs all year.

You can thank the Cubs for that, really. Due to the fact that Chicago has scored the second-most runs in baseball (5.67/game) and allowed the fewest (2.95/game), they just don’t find themselves in many tight games, and so they have managed just 11 save opportunities. That’s tied for the fewest in baseball with the 10-20 Twins, and Rondon’s seven saves are just 25th individually, behind 24 other relievers, including Texas’ Shawn Tolleson and his 9.20 ERA.

Yet the mostly-discredited save statistic — it’s fallen out of favor largely because of how much it relies on opportunity as much as performance — serves only to obscure just how great Rondon has been. By striking out 24 of the 52 hitters he’s faced this year, Rendon’s 46.2 percent strikeout rate trails only the elite Yankees duo of Dellin Betances (50 percent) and Andrew Miller (49.2 percent). He’s just ahead of Boston’s outstanding Craig Kimbrel (42.7 percent). Even Aroldis Chapman, who hasn’t pitched enough yet to qualify, has struck out only 36.4 percent this year, and had whiffed “just” 41.7 percent last year.

He’s become nearly impossible to hit, is the point, and while he’s been very good ever since he inherited the closer’s role from Jose Veras in 2014, this year has been something else. In each of the last two seasons, Rondon has struck out just under 25 percent of hitters he’s faced, and that makes 46 percent a huge jump.

But he’s not throwing harder, which might be your first guess, not when he’s averaging 96.4 mph on his fastball this year, a …

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