Plunk Everyone

In Washington yesterday, the Cincinnati Reds visited the Washington Nationals for a game with an interesting pitching matchup. Johnny Cueto took the mound for the visitors against Collin Balester, and they are 2 of the 3 pitchers who have been hit by a pitch while batting this season (Brandon Backe is the other). They're also 2 of only 3 batters born in 1986 who have ever been hit by pitches, but for now, we're more interested in why only 3 pitchers have been hit by pitches this season.

In 2007, there were a total of 20 pitchers plunked in the majors, and that figure hasn't dropped below 15 since during the 21st century. By August 4th last season, 13 pitchers had been hit by pitches. The last time so few pitchers got hit in a season was 1992, when only 3 got hit.

The number of plate appearances when pitchers actually get to bat has been in steady decline over the year - in 2005 you could see pitchers bat about 4.7 times per game (including both teams), but by 2007 it was down to 4.54. It's actually up slightly this year, at 4.61 but that's very close to the rate of plate appearances per game that pitchers were at as of August 4th last year. So they're not getting hit less just because they're batting less, since they still managed to get hit 20 times last year.

Perhaps the reason for the decrease in pitchers getting hit is the overall supply and demand of major league pitchers. In 2005, 603 people pitched in the major leagues. In 2006 it took 635 pitchers to get through the season, and in 2007 there were 666 players who threw a major league pitch. Eventually the worlds pitching reserves would be tapped out at this rate of expansion, not to mention the maximization of the pitching refinery capacity. Clubs probably realized if their own pitchers got hurt getting hit by pitches, they'd need to go find more - and if their opponents pitchers got hurt while getting hit by pitches, that would just lower the world's supply of pitchers and cause the price to go up, which are high enough thanks to rampant speculation in the pitching futures markets.

So far this season, 578 different pitchers have already been used in 1,669 games. At this time last year, there had already been 585 pitchers used, in only 1629 games. Perhaps by trying to avoid hitting other pitchers with pitches, the league thinks they're keeping more pitchers in the game, but in some case pitchers might be safer getting hit by a pitch than trying to run hard around the bases (Chien-Ming Wang?).

Here are the total HBPs recorded by pitchers at the plate for the past 20 year:

2008 - 3
2007 - 20
2006 - 15
2005 - 17
2004 - 15
2003 - 17
2002 - 15
2001 - 19
2000 - 23
1999 - 14
1998 - 18
1997 - 17
1996 - 12
1995 - 14
1994 - 12
1993 - 14
1992 - 3
1991 - 10
1990 - 16
1989 - 9