Plunk Everyone

It's been a slow postseason as far as HBPs go this year. It seems not many players are interested in taking a pitch and a little bit of pain that might help their team win. There have been just 11 plunks in 24 postseason games in 2008, which is, at the moment, the lowest plunks per game output for a postseason since 1992 when only 5 batters got hit in 19 games. Of course there will be at least 5 more games this season to bring that up, but the trend so far hasn't looked good. If Tampa Bay manages to finish off the Red Sox without getting hit by a pitch, we could have two teams in the World Series who made it their without getting plunked in the postseason. Both have had some close calls, but neither team has been actually been hit in their Division or Championship series. The last time the World Series had two teams that didn't get hit by any pitches in the previous rounds was 1992 when the Blue Jays played the Braves - three years before the Divisional Round was added.

So, since nobody wants to get hit by any interesting number of pitches this year, or do it in any interesting way (with the exception of Jamie Moyer and Russell Martin), I guess I'll just have to live in the past and talk about the 2008 regular season. And if I'm going to talk about the past, I might as well put things in terms of Craig Biggio.

1,672 HBPs were recorded during the 2008 regular season, but only 221 of them were thrown by pitchers who had previously hit Craig Biggio with a pitch. Of the 213 pitchers who plunked Craig Biggio, 54 pitched during the 2008 season, and 48 of them hit at least one batter. Of that group, Vicente Padilla hit the most batters with 15.
Pitchers who plunked Biggio averaged 4.1 hit batters each in 2008, while pitchers who didn't hit Craig Biggio only hit 2.43 each.

On the batting side, the 2008 leaders for getting hit by pitches thrown by pitchers who once plunked Biggio were Lastings Milledge and Nate McLouth with 5 each. Kevin Kouzmanoff, Rickie Weeks, Prince Fielder and Josh Willingham had 4 each. They're all well short of the record though - in 1998, Jason Kendall got hit 12 times by pitchers who had hit Craig Biggio with at least one pitch in their career, at the time they plunked Kendall. Kendall holds the career mark as well, having been hit 59 times by pitchers who hit Craig Biggio and that doesn't include the 23 plunks thrown by a pitcher who hit Kendall before Biggio, and then hit Biggio later in his career.

221 plunks by pitchers who have hit Craig Biggio with a pitch is the lowest single season total since 1996. That year, only 200 batters were hit by pitchers in that not-very-exclusive club. In both 2004 and 2005, pitchers who plunked Biggio hit 396 batters. Last year they hit 325 batters.
Here are the year by year totals of HBPs thrown by pitchers who had previously plunked Craig Biggio:

2008 - 221 2007 - 325 2006 - 356 2005 - 396 2004 - 396 2003 - 341 2002 - 328 2001 - 345 2000 - 321 1999 - 255

1998 - 327 1997 - 291 1996 - 200 1995 - 140 1994 - 62 1993 - 66 1992 - 49 1991 - 23 1990 - 19 1989 - 15

In case your wondering how long it might be before the last batter is hit by a pitcher who plunked Biggio, I checked the same thing for the group of pitchers who hit Don Baylor with a pitch. Baylor's last HBP was on September 28, 1988 (thrown by Bert Blyleven), but the last HBP thrown by a pitcher who plunked Baylor wasn't until August 2, 2001 when Brett Saberhagen threw his final HBP. He hit Troy Glaus.

Circling back to the 2008 postseason, two of the eleven plunks this postseason have been thrown by pitchers who plunked Biggio - Carlos Zambrano hit Casey Blake, and Chad Durbin hit Russell Martin. There has now been at least one postseason HBP thrown by a pitcher who plunked Biggio, in 14 consecutive years, dating back to 1995 when the Division Series was added.