Yesterday when I was at the White Sox/Nationals game, Adam Dunn went 0 for 4 with four strikeouts.  When I was looking at the Tigers box score, I noticed that Austin Jackson also had four strikeouts and was 0 for 4 (although he drew one walk).  Four strikeouts in a game isn’t a common occurance, but it’s also not too rare so here’s a little history of Tigers and bad days at the plate.  Here’s the raw data if you want to look at it yourself.

Austin Jackson yesterday was the first Tigers with four strikeouts in a game.  Last year it happened four times by four different players.  Austin Jackson, Miguel Cabrera (a little surprised by this one), Ryan Raburn and Brennan Boesch all struck out four times in one game in 2010.  Boesch’s game was a four plate appearance game but for the other three, they all had five plate appearances (so there was one time at the plate that they didn’t strike out).

The last Tiger to strike out five times in one game is Craig Monroe.  He did it on June 14, 2007.  Prior to that, it hadn’t been done since 1995 when Danny Bautista went one for six with five strikeouts.  The only other five strikeout games I could find on Play Index were Chet Labs in 1938 and Cecil Fielder in 1990 although there are still some holes during those times.

Only four Tigers have struck out at least four times in a game and hit a home run.  Marcus Thames was the last player to do it in 2008 and he’s joined by Curtis Granderson, Jim Northrup and Alan Trammell (somewhat of a surprise).  Thames is the only Tiger to strike out four times and have two hits in a game which he did in 2006.  That was a 13 inning game.

Tony Clark has the most four strikeout games in a single season with four in 1999.  Cecil Fielder (1990) and Rob Deer (1991 and 1993) were the other two to have four strikeouts games three times.  There’s a four way tie atop the list of all time Tigers with four strikeout games.  Travis Fryman, Cecil Fielder and Tony Clark have eight each.  Rob Deer has seven.  No active Tiger has more then two.

Permalink | Posted in 2011 Tigers, Tigers History