PEDRO GUERRERO vs. DWIGHT GOODEN : THE BATTLE FOR MVP : Hard Hitter, Fast Pitcher Offer Varied Standards, but Tonight, They’re Just 60 Feet 6 Inches Apart : By GORDON EDES, Times Staff Writer

He has converted the National League into his personal K Mart, where strikeouts come cheaper by the dozen and in a seemingly endless supply.

Met pitcher Dwight Gooden is the undisputed king of K’s which, as anyone who has ever wielded a scorecard and pencil could tell you, is baseball shorthand for a strikeout. At Shea Stadium, where his every appearance is greeted by card-carrying Met fans who raise their homemade K’s with every strikeout, Gooden has done more for the letter than anything this side of Sesame Street.

At age 20, Gooden is the youngest pitcher ever to win 20 games, by 27 days over Hall of Famer Bob Feller, who was 20 years 10 months and 5 days old when he won his 20th for the Cleveland Indians on Sept. 8, 1939. Gooden has struck out 10 or more batters in 23 of his 60 starts, including 8 of his 29 this season. He and Herb Score are the only pitchers who have struck out 200 batters or more in each of their first two seasons.

Gooden leads the majors in strikeouts with 219, and, with a 1.81 earned-run average, he’s the only starting pitcher in the big leagues with an ERA under 2.00.

Before he lost last Saturday to the Giants, Gooden had won 14 straight. His last loss before that had been against the Dodgers and Fernando Valenzuela, whom he will face for the third time tonight in sold-out Dodger Stadium.

As a whole, the National League is batting .250. Against Gooden, the average drops by 48 points, to .202.

“He ain’t God, man,” said Giant outfielder Chili Davis after a recent Gooden spectacular, in which he struck out 16 Giant batters, a major league high for strikeouts this season.

Gooden never said he was. Still, the true believers speak of Gooden in reverential tones usually reserved for houses of worship, not baseball clubhouses.

“He’s a young pitcher who, if he stays healthy, might break every record in the book,” said Stan Williams, the former Dodger pitcher who now scouts for the New York Yankees.

“He’s the only guy I’ve ever thought about with a chance to break Cy Young’s record of 511 wins, which I think is an even more unbreakable record than hitting in 56 straight games (Joe DiMaggio’s record).”

For Gooden to break Young’s record, he’d have to average 24 wins for the next 20 years. Preposterous?

“I never thought I’d see a pitcher who had a chance,” Williams said. “Until Gooden.”

Gooden is a lock to win the National League’s Cy Young Award, voted to the league’s outstanding pitcher. But with a month left to go in the season and the Mets hard on the heels of the division-leading Cardinals in the National League East, another question has arisen:

Can K-K-K-K end up spelling MVP, as in most valuable player?

“There’s only one MVP in the National League, and that’s Dwight Gooden,” St. Louis Manager Whitey Herzog has said.

And Herzog has at least one MVP candidate on his own team, outfielder Willie McGee, who is leading the league in hitting with a .368 average.

For Gooden to be named MVP, he would have to outpoll not only McGee but also the man who was the first big-leaguer to hit a home run off him, a year ago last May: Pedro Guerrero of the Dodgers.

“I say it’s between three or four guys,” said Tony Gwynn of the San Diego Padres, last season’s batting champion.

“My No. 1 choice would have to be Guerrero. No. 2 would be McGee. (Dale) Murphy’s got to be up there, and the same with Tommy Herr.

“Pitchers have their own award, the Cy Young. The MVP has to be somebody who plays every day and who helps his team day in, day out. And if you go by that, Pedro Guerrero has turned that team around.”

Guerrero, who is second in the league in hitting at .321 and in home runs with 32, sixth in RBIs with 81, and first in slugging percentage and on-base percentage, wandered into Manager Tom Lasorda’s office the other day, just as Lasorda was expressing the opinion that only every-day players should be eligible for the MVP. In what was something less than an upset, Guerrero agreed.

“We’re not allowed to win the Cy Young,” Guerrero said with simple logic.

Asked if the MVP award would be meaningful to him, Guerrero smiled and said: “I would like to win it--someday.”

Since 1956, when pitchers got their own award for achievement, the National League MVP has been a pitcher just three times: Don Newcombe of the Dodgers, in 1956; Sandy Koufax of the Dodgers, in 1963; and Bob Gibson of the Cardinals, in 1968.

Newcombe won 27 games for a pennant winner in ‘56; Koufax went 25-5 for a world champion in ‘63, with 306 strikeouts and a 1.88 ERA, and Gibson went 22-9 with a record 1.12 ERA for a pennant winner in ’68.

Three American League pitchers have been similarly honored: Vida Blue with Oakland in 1971, and two relievers in the last four years, Rollie Fingers with Milwaukee in 1981 and Wilie Hernandez with Detroit last season.

Gooden has seven starts remaining this season, including tonight’s against the Dodgers. If he were to win all seven, he would finish 27-4. No NL pitcher has won as many as 25 since Steve Carlton went 27-10 for the Phillies in 1972, although the Cardinals’ Joaquin Andujar (20-8) also has a shot this season.

“Seeing what Pete’s done, you have to give him the MVP,” said Bill Russell of the Dodgers. “But it’s like the old argument: Who was more valuable, Koufax or Willie Mays (of the Giants)?

Russell disagreed with the argument that a pitcher shouldn’t be eligible for the award.

“Gooden is in the class of Koufax, and pitchers like Gooden and Koufax don’t come around that often,” he said. “And when they do, they’re MVPs. Look at the numbers they can throw at you.

“Good pitching consistently beats good hitting. Not taking anything away from Pete, but I guarantee you, if you put Gooden against Pete, Pete’s not going to hit him consistently.”

Besides the home run in ‘84, Guerrero has one other hit in 16 at-bats against Gooden in four games. That, too, was a home run, the Dodgers’ only run in a 4-1 loss to Gooden and the Mets here June 4.

“Nobody is going to hit him,” Russell said.

And that, K mart shoppers, says it all.