In Major League Baseball (MLB), the 3,000 strikeout club is the group of 20 pitchers who have struck out 3,000 or more batters in their careers. Walter Johnson became the first member in 1923, and was the only one until Bob Gibson joined in 1974. The most recent player to join is Clayton Kershaw, who accomplished the feat on July 2, 2025.
Randy Johnson reached the mark with the fewest games pitched and innings pitched. The Minnesota Twins were the first of five franchises to see multiple pitchers record their 3,000th strikeout: Walter Johnson (while the franchise was called the Washington Senators) in 1923 and Bert Blyleven in 1986. The other teams with multiple members are the Chicago Cubs (Ferguson Jenkins and Greg Maddux), the New York Yankees (Phil Niekro and CC Sabathia), the Houston Astros (Nolan Ryan and Justin Verlander), and the Los Angeles Dodgers (Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw). Three players got 3,000 strikeouts with one team: Walter Johnson, Bob Gibson, and Kershaw. César Gerónimo is the only player struck out by two pitchers for their 3,000th strikeout: Gibson in 1974 and Ryan in 1980. Ten 3,000-strikeout pitchers are also members of the 300-win club. Seven members were named to the All-Century Team, a list of MLB's best 100 players; fans later elected four of them as starters. All members of the club also won a Cy Young Award in their careers except for Ryan, Blyleven, Don Sutton, Walter Johnson (whose career predated the award's creation), Niekro, and Curt Schilling. Four pitchers in the group are left-handers: Johnson, Steve Carlton, Clayton Kershaw, and CC Sabathia. Scherzer and Verlander are the only two active members of the club, with Verlander being the active leader in the stat.
The club is considered to almost be a guarantee of entry into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Fifteen members of the 3,000-strikeout club have been elected to the Hall, most recently Sabathia during the 2025 balloting. Three more members (Kershaw, Scherzer, Verlander) do not yet meet the 5-year eligibility requirement, but are widely considered to be future inductees once eligible. The remaining two, Roger Clemens and Schilling, made their first appearances on the ballot for the 2013 elections and received over 50% of the total votes before falling off the ballot in 2022. Clemens' future election is seen as uncertain because of his alleged links to use of performance-enhancing drugs. Kershaw will not be eligible until 2031, as a player must be retired for 5 years or have been dead for 6 months to be considered for the Hall of Fame.