I initially thought this referred to Rays batters.

1,404 is just insane, especially for 2003, when strikeouts were noticeably lower than they are now.

2003 CUBS

Pitcher...................K......IP
Kerry Wood...........266....211
Mark Prior.............245....211
Matt Clement........171....202
Carlos Zambrano....168....214
Shawn Estes.........103....152

Kyle Farnsworth.......92.....76
Mike Remlinger (!)....83.....69
Joe Borowski...........66.....68
Juan Cruz...............65.....61
Antonio Alfonseca....51.....66

no one else with more than 30 K

I was looking stuff up related to this the other night when I saw a reference to them approaching it. It's not as impressive as I immediately thought since the seasonal AL K/9 is .5 higher than the previous best, 7.5 vs. 6.9 in 2009 and '11. Detroit and New York are also very likely to pass the mark this season though the Rays are well ahead of them. The chances of them passing the Cubs record are pretty low, if there are no extra-inning games then even having no road games where they pitch only eight innings would require them to average 11.73 K/9 to tie.

Of course the Cubs had the advantage of striking out pitchers.

Those Dusty staffs always K'd tons of guys but Dusty was consistent in his feelings about BBs. The 2003 Cubs also led the NL in walks (in the bad way) while Cub batters were 14th.

Cub pitchers, rank in Ks, rank in BBs (other way around just to confuse you), Cub batters rank in BBs

2003 1, 16, 14
2004 1, 9, 14
2005 1, 13, 16
2006 1, 16, 16

That's the Baker Cubs conundrum in a nutshell. His teams certainly seemed to reflect his expressed attitude towards walks.

With the Reds, things have been much more normal:

2008 4, 8, 8
2009 12, 8, 11
2010 11, 6, 9
2011 12, 13, 6
2012 5, 3, 8

His teams certainly seemed to reflect his expressed attitude towards walks.

Can't have players clogging the bases.

The second place team is the 2004 Cubs, followed by the 2001 Cubs and the 2002 Cubs.

Top 100 teams in Pitching K, prior to this year.

Striking out pitchers is clearly a huge advantage. The Yankees (now Rays) were 20th.

The Batting K record is 1,529 by the 2010 D-Backs. Oakland currently leads 2012 with 1,277.

The top 22 spots are all post-2000.

Thanks for that link Shock. Looks like the Rays ought to hold the non-early 2000s Cubs record and have a good shot at 2nd place overall.

The Schilling-Johnson D-Backs put up some huge team totals, too.