Plunk Everyone

In football, they talk a lot about being more physical than your opponent, or out-toughing them, as a key to victory. You don't hear that kind of language so much in baseball, but if there is a way to prove your baseball team it tougher than the other team, it's getting hit by more pitches. And it's a winning strategy.

So far this season, the team that gets hit by more pitches in a game has won that game 59.6% of the time. That's down a little from last season, when teams achieved victory in 60.6% of games in which they took more plunks than their opponent, but it's right in line with the division era total (1995-2007) of 59.7%. So if a team could insure getting hit more times than the opponent in every game in a season, they'd go 97-65 at this year rate.

Some teams have been better than others at implementing this strategy this season. The Orioles have the best record in the league, in games when they get hit more times than they hit their opponents, with 14 wins and 4 losses. Unfortunately for them, they've only gotten hit more than the other team in 18 games. Overall, they're 54-58, so their win percentage is 0.296 higher when they manage to take more plunks than the other team. (Having league leading plunker Daniel Cabrera pitching probably doesn't help).

Milwaukee has achieved 23 victories in games in which they get hit more, winning 71.9% of such games. Getting hit more times than the other team in 32 games has helped them achieve a 0.553 winning pct. That's good for 2nd place in their division.

The Indians have been plunked more than there opponents in 43 games this season (more than any other team), but they've only won 21 of those games. That's only a 0.488 win pct., but that's still better than their 0.438 overall mark. In all, 26 teams do have a better win pct when they get hit more times than the other team. The only ones who do worse when they get plunked more are the Rangers, Yankees, Tigers, and Mariners. So if you're facing one of those teams, tell your pitchers not to worry too much about locating those inside pitches... not that you'd want to tell them to intentionally hit batters on those teams, but the numbers show you have a better chance of winning if you happen to throw a couple that don't quite miss them.

Team	W-L (pct) with more HBP	W-L (pct) overall	difference
Orioles	14-4 (0.778)	54-58 (0.482)	0.296
Brewers	23-9 (0.719)	63-51 (0.553)	0.166
Dodgers	15-6 (0.714)	56-56 (0.500)	0.214
Twins	12-5 (0.706)	62-51 (0.549)	0.157
Braves	14-6 (0.700)	52-61 (0.460)	0.24
Cubs	18-8 (0.692)	68-46 (0.596)	0.096
Rays	20-9 (0.69)	67-45 (0.598)	0.092
Angels	17-8 (0.68)	70-43 (0.619)	0.061
Jays	19-9 (0.679)	57-56 (0.504)	0.175
Astros	14-7 (0.667)	54-58 (0.482)	0.185
Cardinals	13-7 (0.650)	63-52 (0.548)	0.102
Marlins	21-12 (0.636)	60-53 (0.531)	0.105
Red Sox	18-11 (0.621)	65-49 (0.57)	0.051
Dbacks	8-5 (0.615)	59-54 (0.522)	0.093
Phillies	16-10 (0.615)	61-51 (0.545)	0.07
White Sox	17-11 (0.607)	62-49 (0.559)	0.048
Rockies	16-11 (0.593)	52-63 (0.452)	0.141
Royals	15-11 (0.577)	53-61 (0.465)	0.112
Pirates	15-12 (0.556)	51-62 (0.451)	0.105
Giants	11-9 (0.55)	47-65 (0.42)	0.13
Mets	7-6 (0.538)	59-53 (0.527)	0.011
A's	10-9 (0.526)	53-59 (0.473)	0.053
Rangers	13-12 (0.520)	60-54 (0.526)	-0.006
Padres	14-13 (0.519)	43-70 (0.381)	0.138
Yankees	17-16 (0.515)	61-52 (0.540)	-0.025
Indians	21-22 (0.488)	49-63 (0.438)	0.05
Nationals	16-18 (0.471)	42-71 (0.372)	0.099
Reds	7-8 (0.467)	52-62 (0.456)	0.011
Tigers	7-8 (0.467)	55-57 (0.491)	-0.024
Mariners	5-12 (0.294)	44-69 (0.389)	-0.095

So most of the time, getting hit by pitches more than the other team is an effective strategy, but as far as oversimplified strategies go, it's not nearly as good as "score more runs than the other team" or even "get more RBI than the other team". It's actually not even quite as good as walking more than the other team. Teams have walked there way to victory at a rate of 61.6% this season - that's about the same as last season, but down from the 62.3% victory rate for teams that walk more than their opponent in the seasons from 1995 to 2007. That doesn't include intentional walks though.

Getting more intentional walks than the other team has meant victory in 77.8% of games this season. However, it's getting harder to draw victory through intentional walks, because the average for the 1995-2007 span is 79%. What's even more interesting about that is that teams use the intentional walk to avoid homers, but teams that hit more homers than the other team only win 75% of the time this year. That's up a bit this season from the 73.7% rate of homering your way to victory from 1995 to 2007. So far this season, the team that hits more homers in a game is 880-294, while the team that draws more intentional walks is 281-80.

The recent popular trend of placing a high value on OBP works out pretty well as a strategy for victory - the team with the higher OBP in a particular game has won 81.7% of the time this season. However, they might be over-complicating things, because just getting more hits than thte other team wins 81.5% of the games in 2008. However, hitting your way to victory is more effective this year, since it worked 79.1% of the time in 1995 to 2007, and out OBPing your opponent is down a bit, having worked 82.5% of the time in that span.