Plunk Everyone

On September 9th when Jason Giambi collected his 155th HBP, he passed Brady Anderson to become the all time HBP leader among players with the astrological sign Capricorn. Jose Guillen (Taurus) is the only other active player who holds the record for his zodiac sign.

Can someone please break the 13 way tie for the season lead in HBPs recorded on Fridays? Kurt Suzuki, Carlos Quentin, Rickie Weeks, Nate McLouth, Hanley Ramirez, Kelly Shoppach, Chase Utley, Jeff Francoeur, Jason Bay, Jason Kendall, Alex Cora, David Eckstein and Melvin Mora all have 3 HBPs on Fridays this year.

Frank Thomas only hit 1 sacrifice fly this season, leaving him still 8 short of the all time sacrifice fly record, and confirming I made the right choice in not starting a sacrifice fly record chase blog. If he had done it though, he'd be the 2nd Frank Thomas to hold the Sacrifice Fly record. So that's interesting.

So far this year, teams have won about 56.7% of games in which they were hit by a pitch, but they've also won 64.9% of games in which they hit a sacrifice fly. Maybe I should have gone with the sacrifice fly blog after all... Oddly, teams that hit into a triple play are 2-0 this season.

The Rays hit 45 batters this season, but only 4 of them scored a run. Only 3 of those were earned runs. On the other end, Baltimore gave up 26 earned runs scored by batters they plunked, which means their team ERA would be 0.17 lower without all those hit batters.

Prince Fielder has hit into one Fielders Choice this season, and only 2 in his career.

Asdrubal Cabrera has batted .255 this season, but in games when he had at least one hit he batted .453. That's the biggest gap in the league between a batter's overall average and his batting average on days when he could actually hit. Kenji Johjima is 2nd in that category with a .415 average when he hits, and a .223 average overall, and Jason Giambi is third. Giambi has batted .438 54% of the time and 0.000 46% of the time for a total of .251. (I know, nobody used batting average anymore, but it is - usually - still the measure of how often a batter does what he's trying to do at the plate when given a fair chance. Except for the smart ones who go up trying to get hit by a pitch.)

The combined batting average of all major league players this season is 0.264, which means that Jeff Keppinger currently has the lead for the most average batting average. Keppinger's average is actually .263858, which is just 0.000079 off of the league average to six decimal places, which is .263779. But, Rick Ankiel, Robinson Cano, Cesar Izturis, Jose Guillen, Kevin Kouzmanoff, David Ortiz and Brendan Harris all might be close enough to win the average batting title.

Batter	AVG	Diff from MLB AVG
Jeff Keppinger	0.263858	0.000079
Rick Ankiel	0.263922	0.000143
Robinson Cano	0.26415	0.000371
Cesar Izturis	0.264197	0.000418
Jose Guillen	0.263247	0.000532
Kevin Kouzmanoff	0.263071	0.000708
David Ortiz	0.264563	0.000784
Brendan Harris	0.264775	0.000996
Carlos Gomez	0.262411	0.001368
Dan Uggla	0.262042	0.001737