Texas Rangers' Top 5 Pitchers with the most strikeouts in a single season

August 22nd was the anniversary of Nolan Ryan striking out his 5,000 batter and so I wanted to celebrate that by looking back at the best single season strikeout kings for Texas

Sports Contributor Archive 2018
Sports Contributor Archive 2018 | Ron Vesely/GettyImages
3 of 5

#3 Lance Lynn 246 Strikeouts in 2019

In the later years of the Jon Daniels tenure as general manager his staff had a great ability to find undervalued starting pitchers and turn them into All-Stars or Cy Young contenders while in Texas. The Rangers did that with Mike Minor, Lance Lynn, and Kyle Gibson.

The best of these pitchers was Lance Lynn. By the end of the 2018 season Lynn had fallen out of favor in St. Louis and Minnesota and then was a mild disappointment for the New York Yankees. He became a free agent and did not get the type of offers a pitcher of his caliber should receive. He decided to sign with Texas for three years and try to revive his career.

2019 was Lynn's best season of his career. He won 16 games for a Texas team that was in the wild card race till September. He had a 3.67 ERA, pitched 208 innings, and had 246 strikeouts. That season earned him Cy Young votes and he finished 5th in the voting for the award. Lynn was Daniel's second success story of finding a pitcher in the free agency bargain bin and turning them into one of the best pitchers in the league. The combination of Minor and Lynn at the top of the rotation won plenty of games for Texas in the 2019 season.

Lynn would eventually be traded after the 2020 season to the White Sox for Dane Dunning. He was nearly brought back at the trade deadline this season, but ended up being traded to the Dodgers. Lynn now resides third on the single-season strikeout list for the Texas Rangers with 246 strikeouts in the 2019 season.

Schedule