Scherzer in good company with 1,000th K

NEW YORK -- Max Scherzer still isn't making a big deal about his win-loss record, even at 17-1, and he probably never will. That's a team accomplishment, he said, more than anything he has done.

His 1,000th strikeout, however, brought a smile to his face. Jason Kipnis ' first-inning swing-and-miss on Thursday made Scherzer the 469th pitcher in Major League history to hit the mark, and the 60th active hurler.

The pace with which Scherzer reached 1,000, however, stands out. Scherzer needed 957 Major League innings to get there, the fourth-lowest total of any active pitcher according to Elias Sports Bureau. Scherzer's teammate Octavio Dotel needed just 820 1/3 innings; San Francisco's Tim Lincecum had the fastest pace of active starters, with 896 1/3 innings. Johan Santana beat Scherzer to 1,000 with 947 2/3 innings.

"The thousand K's, that means more," Scherzer said. "That takes pitching effectively for many years. That's something I feel I've done, and lately I've gotten better at generating swings-and-misses. And so to get it within basically five-plus years, to me that means a lot."