Why the Democrats are wrong and other meanderings

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Location: Metro Phoenix, Arizona, United States

I'm too lazy to type anything about me. Read my blog and I'm sure you'll eventually learn a few things.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

New Strikeout Record

For the second consecutive year, and third time in the last five years, we have a new single-season strikeout record. Mark Reynolds struck out for the 200th time this season earlier today, and is up to 201 with the game still in progress. Ryan Howard has slowed down his pace considerably and, with 196, there's still a chance he'll miss the 200 mark, just as I predicted he'd miss it before the season started. Who would have thought that he'd miss it when he was on pace for 230ish in mid-summer? Jack Cust still has an outside shot to reach the mark, as he's at 192. If he fails to reach it, lack of playing time will play a major role, as he's sat out 13 games, and only had one plate appearance in 6 more, based on a quick look over his game log. He managed to go half a month without a multi-strikeout game, which also hurt his chances a bit. After standing as the record for 34 years, Bobby Bonds's 189 strikeouts have been surpassed six times in five years.

Kudos to Bob Melvin for not benching Reynolds out of fears that breaking the record would hurt his feelings, as was done with Jose Hernandez before Adam Dunn broke the record. Of course, that would have meant benching him for the last five games of the season, unlike the one (or maybe two) that Hernandez sat out.

In other Diamondbacks strikeout news, Dunn struck out for the 160th time on Wednesday, making it the fifth straight year he's reached that total. No other player has done it more than four times in their career.

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