Plunk Everyone

The St. Louis Cardinals got hit by 42 pitches last season, which tied them for 25th place in the Major League HBP standings. But, Baltimore and Atlanta got their 42 HBPs in slightly fewer plate appearances, so the Cardinals had the 4th worst plunks per plate appearance in the majors, at 0.0066. That means they got hit just once every 151.67 trips to the plate. 42 HBPs is the Cardinals lowest total since 1998, but the team has made some changes and should see improvement in the 2009 plunk total.

Ryan Ludwick led the team with 8 HBPs last season, which was a career high for him and something he should be able to build upon in '09. Rick Ankiel also had a career high with 5 plunks last year, but maybe he'd like to get hit by as many pitches as he thrown in a single season, which would be 6. Jason LaRue and Albert Pujols got hit by 5 pitches last year, but that's probably right at the level you can expect for them in '09. LaRue passed the 100 plunk milestone for his career last season, so there's always the chance of a post-milestone let-down. They lost Cesar Izturis at shortstop, who overachieved with 6 HBPs last season, but they've replaced him with Khalil Greene, who got hit 5 times for the Padres last year, before getting all mad about his inability to hit the ball and breaking his own hand in an altercation with a dugout wall. Greene is someone who can get hit by a fair number of pitches - his career high is 8, and he's got 32 in his career.

The biggest week link in the Cardinals HBP offense was the 2nd base position. The Cardinals 2nd basemen only got hit once in 694 plate appearances, which as you might have guessed, puts them dead last in the Major Leagues. Based on the pitchers they faced, and the number of plate appearances they had against each of them, the Cardinals 2nd basemen should have gotten hit about 6 times last year, so they underachieved by 5 hbps. "Should have" doesn't mean they deserved to get plunked that many times, just that would have been the expected value based on the season HBP rates of the pitchers faced by Cardinals 2nd basemen. There expected plunks was still only 25th in the league, which means that the pitchers they faced didn't give up a lot of plunks on average, but they still should have been able to do better than 1 HBP on the whole season. The only pitcher to plunk a Cardinals 2nd baseman in 2008 was Randy Wolf of the Astros (now with the Dodgers).

The Cardinals 2nd basemen were so bad at getting hit by pitches last season, that they've taken the radical approach of not having any 2nd basemen on their roster this year. Skip Schumaker is listed on the depth chart as the starting 2nd basemen, but he's still listed as a left-fielder because they've developed a new kind of defensive shift where they play two left fielders and have one of them playing really shallow and shifted around to the right side of the field. And that guy has to cover 2nd base in all the situations where a 2nd baseman would, but he's a 4th outfielder, not an infielder. This is the kind of creativity Tony La Russa is known for.

The other big underachievers in the HBP category were the pitchers. We can't really expect pitchers to take a lot of plunks, but the Cardinals should have had about 3 but didn't get plunked at all. Maybe they could at least chip in with 1 this year? On the other hand though, the Cardinals were best in the National League and tied for best in the Majors in pinch-hit plunks, with 5. Hopefully they can keep that up.

On the pitching side, the Cards hit 51 opposing batters last season, which is their lowest total since 1996 when they hit just 35. But, 51 hit batters put the Cardinals in a tie for 17th in the Major League standings, so that's just a little bit below the median. They can probably be expected to be right around that area again in 2009 - unless someone makes them angry.