DeGrom Favored To Lead NL In Strikeouts But Is There Value With Scherzer?

The 2020 Major League Baseball season has been shortened to 60 games. That makes it far more challenging to figure out who is the best bet to win some of the season-long props. That’s especially true for pitchers, who only come out and throw once every fifth day, which means that they’re looking at about 12 starts in total this season. Just how will that impact a prop like the strikeout leader? Let’s take a closer look.

JACOB DEGROM, NEW YORK METS

ODDS: +350

DeGrom was the strikeout leader back in 2019 and is the National League favorite again this year. He started out a little slow last year, posting an ERA of 6.30 in April, but really turned it on to finish the season with a 1.44 ERA to go along with 255 strikeouts. What’s interesting is that number is a bit low for DeGrom as he had 269 strikeouts in 2018 and he also had 239 strikeouts in 2017 but started one less game. He should be among the league leaders once again.

MAX SCHERZER, WASHINGTON NATIONALS

ODDS: +700

Max Scherzer finished third in strikeouts last but led the National League in the category in the three years before that. He was slowed last year due to a back injury but was still able to strike out 243 batters in 172 innings during the games he could play. If you do the math, he averaged nine strikeouts per game. If he started 33 games like Stephen Strasburg or 32 like DeGrom, he’d have won this race.

Don’t worry too much about Scherzer’s durability. He was able to post at least 30 starts in each of the last 10 seasons. Scherzer is still a great bet to lead the National League.

WALKER BUEHLER, LOS ANGELES DODGERS

ODDS: +600

Last year, Walker Buehler had a 14-4 record to go along with a 3.26 ERA and 215 strikeouts. He was able to do all of this in only 30 starts. He was tied for ninth place in NL Cy Young voting last year behind both of his teammates Clayton Kershaw and Hyun-Jin Ryu. But with one of those teammates now gone, Buehler has a chance to make a huge leap this year. Buehler’s talent and team success could very well get him this award this season. He is a good bet to be strikeout leader as well.

STEPHEN STRASBURG, WASHINGTON NATIONALS

ODDS: +900

Stephen Strasburg has unfortunately been on a bit of a pitch count for most of his career, as last year was only the second time that he had broke 200 innings.  However, he is still in the prime of his career and is primed for an outstanding regular season after last year’s postseason run. The fact that we’re looking at shortened season could help his case since he’s not going to experience a ton of wear and tear.

After earning World Series MVP by putting up a 2.51 ERA and 14 strikeouts, Strasburg could be off the pitch count and could really make this race even more competitive.

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