"What a week I'm having!"
—The great Eugene Levy as Walter Kornbluth in "Splash"

Andy Phillips had a bad week.

On Monday he struck out five times in five tries, tying the one-game, nine-inning record, in the Yankees sole win over the power-house Devil Rays, 6-2. Then on Tuesday, Robinson Cano (and his pal Friday) was called up to start at second place, thereby insuring that Phillips' playing time gets even rarer. And now his team's in last place.

In his short career, Phillips has nine strikeouts and no walks in 33 plate appearances. His five strikeouts came against three D-Ray pitchers. Starter Scott Kazmir, whom I would assume Phillips saw a bit in Triple-A, got him out on strikes three times, and relievers Travis Harper and Danys Baez got him one time each.

This was the 43rd time in major-league history that someone struck out five times in a ballgame. Tony Batista was the last to commit the feat, last season. The extra-inning record is six done by seven different men (the last being Toronto's Alex Gonzalez on Sept 9, 1998 in a 13-inning game).

That got me thinking about whether a five-strikeout game is just bad luck or if a player can very easily get down on himself after the first few and "bring on" the fifth strikeout.

How improbable is a five-strikeouts-in-five-tries game anyway?

Well, it depends on the batter. Phillips has struck out 27.3% of the time in his short career (9 Ks in 33 PA). The odds of him striking out five times in a row are 0.002. That is, that one would expect it to happen in 0.2% of his games.

Let's say Phillips plays every game of a 162-game schedule, the odds only go up to 0.24, or to put it another way, one would expect Phillips to play every day for more than four years before he would strike out five times in a game.

It should happen every 663rd game, in the sixth inning to be precise. And yet it did happen in his tenth game in his major-league career and just his second game with five trips to the plate.

So maybe Phillips is just a young player who got overwhelmed by, and perhaps therefore aided in causing, a five-strikeout game. What about the other 5K men?

[Note: total strikeouts were not kept for the 1899 season.]

So it looks like aside from Ray Jarvis, a remarkably weak-hitting pitcher, and Bo Jackson, most of these players beat the odds in collecting their five whiffs. Jarvis' career batting average was .069 (2-for-29, both singles), he had 19 strikeouts and just one walk, and he collected just 2 RBI, oddly in the same game July 18, 1969 in a 6-1 win over the Orioles (the one run coming a Don Buford homer that became a single when he passed Dave May at first).

So if these men beat the odds were there other more likely culprits who somehow avoided the 5K game?

Here are the men with the highest odds for their career of collecting 5 strikeouts with the expected number of 5K games in a 162-game schedule:

Of course, none of these men came close to batting in 162 games. Many were pitchers.

Let's look at batters with at least 500 plate appearances for their career:

Again, we have a ton of pitchers, many of whom would rarely, if ever, come to bat five times in a game. What about narrowing it to position players exclusively?

Bo Jackson and Rob Deer were just meeting expectations all along. Russ Branyan is a real shirker though.

OK, those are based on career stats, how about individual seasons? Here are the most likely to record a 5K game: (min. 100 PA)

So if Dean Chance had played every game of the 1968 season, in all probability he would have had 12 games with five strikeouts. OK, I know, I know: more pitchers. Let's limit it to position players:

Dave Duncan may be one heck of a pitching coach but in 1967 he struck almost every other plate appearance. Oopha!

Maybe that's a bit unfair given the fact that he was a role player at this stage of his career. When he did start the Ks went down a bit and he recorded four straight better than average OPSs to start the Seventies. What if we limited our query to starting position players (min. 400 PA):

Again with the Bo Jackson and the Rob Deer? Melvin Nieves did the best at beating the odds.

So what did we learn? Andy Phillips is a bad bet to ever record another five-strikeout game, but then again, he may never get five trips to the plate in one game again. And if you want to put money down on the next 5K guy, think Russ Branyan, not that I'm advocating betting especially on balls and strikes. Now, cock fighting is a different matter.