Angels Reliever Piling Up Punchouts Nike at one point chose to focus an entire advertising campaign on the popularity of home runs, declaring that "chicks love the long ball." But in an era of smaller sluggers and increasingly-dominant pitchers, Major League Baseball may want to rebrand to focus on strikeouts. In recent days, piling up bunches of strikeouts has been all the rage. From Max Scherzer of the Detroit Tigers striking out 15 batters in seven innings to Dan Haren of the Los Angeles Angels striking out a career-high 14 in a shutout Thursday, it is looking like another Year of the Pitcher. But it is Haren's teammate, a little-known reliever (outside of fantasy baseball leagues) named Ernesto Frieri that has been the best of them all when it comes to punching batters out. Since joining the Angels in a trade from the San Diego Padres, Frieri has recorded 19 strikeouts in 8 and two-thirds innings. Should he record his first out by strikeout in his next appearance, Frieri will join Roger Clemens, Kerry Wood and Randy Johnson as a member of the 20 strikeouts in 9 innings club. The only difference being that it took Frieri 10 games to do it. In seven of Frieri's nine appearances for the Angels he has recorded two or more strikeouts, and twice he has struck out the side. Amassing strikeouts is nothing new for Frieri. In 117 career innings, the Colombian right-hander has 156 strikeouts, or a staggering 12 per nine innings which puts him fifth since 1920 among pitchers with 100 or more innings. Craig Kimbrel, the Atlanta Braves second-year reliever, tops the list at 15.2 per nine innings. If it feels like strikeouts have been increasing every year, it is because they have. In each season since 2005 the average number of strikeouts a game has gone up. Having reached a record pace of 7.42 a game this season, the average is now more than one strikeout higher than it was in 2005. The increase of 0.32 a game since last season is the largest yearly change in that timeframe. Meanwhile the average of 4.21 runs a game is the lowest it has been since 1992 and this is the third consecutive season that there has been less than one home run a game after 16 consecutive seasons of surpassing the mark, with a peak of 1.17 in 2000. Among all the good news for fans of strikeouts, there was also some bad. One of the greatest strikeout pitchers ever chose to retire this month. Wood, of the aforementioned 20-strikeout game, pitched one final appearance on May 18. Naturally he struck out the only batter he faced on three pitches.