Historically the Minnesota Twins have not had a lot of pitchers that were strikeout pitchers. I was curious as to just how many times a Twins pitcher has struck out 15 or more in a single game. Turns out that a Twins pitcher has accomplished this feat just six times in 9,095 games from 1961-2017 and no Twins pitcher has done it more than once.
| Rk | Player | Date | Tm | Opp | Rslt | App,Dec | IP | H | R | SO | Pit | Str |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Johan Santana | 2007-08-19 | MIN | TEX | W 1-0 | GS-8, W | 8.0 | 2 | 0 | 17 | 112 | 83 |
| 2 | Francisco Liriano | 2012-07-13 | MIN | OAK | L 3-6 | GS-8, L | 8.0 | 4 | 4 | 15 | 112 | 75 |
| 3 | Bert Blyleven | 1986-08-01 | MIN | OAK | W 10-1 | CG, W | 9.0 | 2 | 1 | 15 | ||
| 4 | Jerry Koosman | 1980-06-23 | MIN | KCR | W 4-1 | CG, W | 9.0 | 10 | 1 | 15 | ||
| 5 | Joe Decker | 1973-06-26 | MIN | CHW | W 4-0 | SHO, W | 9.0 | 4 | 0 | 15 | ||
| 6 | Camilo Pascual | 1961-07-19 (1) | MIN | LAA | W 6-0 | SHO, W | 9.0 | 5 | 0 | 15 |
If you look at the entire American League during the time period of 1961 to current the leaders are Nolan Ryan with 23 such games, Randy Johnson with 17, Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens with 10 and Sam McDowell with 6, no one else had done it more than three times.