Wolf picks up scent of strikeouts

This makes all the sense in the world, until you check the last name.

Contending team in National League West imports left-handed strikeout machine. Answers to the name of Randy.

Wolf, that is. Not Johnson.

“I’d be like a Mini-Me to Randy Johnson,” Wolf said.

Johnson looks like a power pitcher -- he stands 6 feet 10, a full foot taller than Wolf -- with five Cy Young Awards and nine league strikeout titles to his credit.

Wolf looks like a middle reliever, or a second baseman, if he looks the part of a major leaguer at all. If you bumped into him at the movies, you’d be more likely to say “excuse me” than “don’t you play for the Dodgers?”

But he does, and he starts today at Dodger Stadium, against the Chicago Cubs. The Dodgers signed him for victories and innings, and he has delivered on both counts. The Dodgers signed Jason Schmidt for strikeouts, and Wolf has delivered those too.

Check out the league leaders in strikeouts: Cole Hamels of the Philadelphia Phillies and Jake Peavy of the San Diego Padres, followed by Wolf.

Johnson could catch up soon enough. He got a late start in his return to the Arizona Diamondbacks, in the wake of back surgery. In Johnson, Wolf sees the kind of guy who inspires fans to stand when he gets two strikes on a batter, in anticipation of that third strike.

“You see a guy who is an imposing-looking pitcher,” Wolf said. “I’m out there and I’m not that threatening-looking.”

Wolf is funny, thoughtful and self-deprecating, the kind of guy who prefers to let his numbers brag for themselves.

He has 66 strikeouts in 60 innings, in the ninth season of a career in which his strikeouts never have exceeded his innings.

On April 20, he struck out 10, his first double-digit strikeout total in 88 starts and five years. On May 11, four starts later, he struck out 11.

Mike Lieberthal caught Wolf when the two came up with the Phillies. The two Valley boys came home this year, to play for the Dodgers. Perhaps Lieberthal can explain how R. Wolf became K-Wolf.

“It wasn’t like he was a [Tom] Glavine, a lefty without many strikeouts,” Lieberthal said. “He’s always had his strikeouts, but obviously not like now.”

Wolf can’t throw 95. He never could.

This is his first full season after Tommy John surgery. In some cases, pitchers enter the operating room to get a new elbow ligament and leave with a few extra miles per hour on their fastball. Wolf got a new ligament -- and got back his plain old fastball.

It’s below average, really, at 88 to 91 mph. But he also throws a slider, a changeup and a curve so slow his fastball actually does appear fast, at least as the next pitch.

“It’s kind of sneaky fast,” pitching coach Rick Honeycutt said, “especially after you see that 62-63-mph curveball.”

Johan Santana gets his strikeouts on the change. Francisco Rodriguez gets his on the slider.

Wolf gets his on the fastball, such as it is. It’s not fast, but it’s not entirely straight, with what Honeycutt calls “the little hop at the end.”

And, with a year of rehabilitation to hone his craft, his control is better than ever. He typically strikes out two batters for each one he walks. This year, that ratio is nearly four to one.

“It’s not power,” Manager Grady Little said. “His location is so good, that’s where most of his strikeouts are coming from.”

Wolf did not bet on baseball last winter, but he bet on himself. He turned down multiyear offers to sign a one-year contract with the Dodgers.

If he comes home and wins, the story warms your heart. If he comes back but his arm does not, our local hero flushes away millions.

“For him to take the deal that he did,” General Manager Ned Colletti said, “I had a pretty good sense he must have been feeling pretty good.”

This could be a mirage, of course. He struck out four in his last start. He has a three-strikeout game to go with his 11-strikeout game. The truth is somewhere in between, and not in double digits.

“I don’t think he’s that type of pitcher,” Lieberthal said. “He won’t get as many strikeouts as he did that game. He’s not a Randy Johnson or a [John] Smoltz that can power through guys week in and week out.

“He had a great game, and he’s had a couple of great performances, but you never know.”

If you have no idea what Wolf is doing near the top of the strikeout leaderboard, well, neither does he.

“Look at the strikeout leaders, Peavy and Hamels. Both of them are what I like to call overly nasty,” Wolf said. “They have pitches that -- when they’re on -- are unhittable.

“Peavy’s slider is ridiculous. Hamels has a changeup that, as he goes down the road, people will look at it like Johan Santana’s.”

And you?

“I don’t understand me,” Wolf said. “I really don’t have a pitch that’s nasty -- slow looping curve, average slider, average changeup, average fastball. Nothing about me is nasty.”

From a few lockers away, Joe Beimel listens in on the interview, until he decides he has heard enough self-deprecation for one afternoon. He shakes his head until he catches Wolf’s eye.

“That’s a shame you think that way,” Beimel said.

The batters think that way too, shaking their heads on the slow walk back to the dugout.

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bill.shaikin@latimes.com