Plunk Everyone

As you've likely seen by now, the Carlos Quentin plunk streak moved to 6 consecutive games after yesterday's first inning plunk thrown by Kyle Davies. According to MLB Gameday's pitch f/x data, that one was the closest to the plate of any of the plunks during the streak at about 8.4 inches off the inside of the plate. Here's the listing of Quentin's plunks during the streak:

Date	Pitcher	Inning	Start Speed	End Speed	Inches inside	height in inches
08/14/2008	Kyle Davies	1	93.5	84.4	8.4	47.3
08/11/2008	Josh Beckett	8	94.7	86	14.6	41.1
08/10/2008	David Aardsma	4	94.5	87.3	8.6	41.4
08/09/2008	Daisuke Matsuzaka	4	93.8	85.8	12.0	48.9
08/08/2008	Jon Lester	5	80.3	75.1	11.4	13.2
08/07/2008	Zach Miner	4	90.3	82.3	10.6	35.1

As you can see, yesterday's plunk was also the second highest of the streak. Jon Lester was the only pitcher who has plunked Quentin below the altitude of the strike zone during the streak, most likely because he's the only lefty in the group.

So if you're thinking 6 games isn't much of a streak, here are a couple of things to think about:

First, in the span of the last 50 years, the only other player whose been hit 6 times in a span of 6 consecutive games is Ron Hunt in 1971, on his way to a 50 plunk season. He had a pair of 2 plunk games and a pair in which he didn't get hit in that span of games between August 17th and the 23rd that year. Nobody has been hit 7 times in a 7 game span in the last 50 years. Maybe never. So Quentin isn't just having a record streak of getting hit once - he's also getting hit as many times in this span of games as has ever been recorded.

Second, the average full time player in the past few seasons only gets hit in about 5.6 games per season. For the sake of comparison, a full time batter gets a hit in an average of 95 games in a season. So given the relative rarity of HBPs versus base hits, Quentin's 6 game plunk streak could be viewed as the equivalent of a 101 game hitting streak. How do you like that, Joe DiMaggio? (Then again, if you look at it in probability terms and figure the odds of a plunk in a game are 5.6/162 and the odds of at least one hit in a game are 95/162, then it's more like a 38 game hitting streak, if you work it out as though each game is an independent trial - which it obviously isn't).

Labels: Carlos Quentin