Plunk Everyone

The Mariners finished 2nd to last in the majors in HBPs in 2008, and that's pretty bad. On the other hand, they were first in the majors in plunks recorded by players born in Japan, so that was good. They were also tied for 15th in hit batters by their pitchers, and that's just right in the middle.
But, the real problem was that only 39% of the Mariners 38 plunks were recorded by players born in the United States. That's up a bit from the past two seasons, but since the beginning of 2006, only 35% of the Mariners HBPs were produced by American born batters. Obviously, outsourcing has been all the rage in the past decade, with globalization and all that fun stuff, but if some management consultant went into the Mariners front office sometime in 2006 and sold them on the idea that outsourcing their team's HBP production to other countries would somehow lead to prosperity, they've been led down the wrong path. American's are still the best in the world at getting hit by pitches in Major League Baseball games.

Last season, the Mariners were led by Kenji Johjima with 8 HBPs, and Ichiro behind him with 5. Jeff Clement also chipped in with 5 HBPs - but he showed some promise for 2009, since he got those 5 plunks in just 66 games. But the other American players not named Jeff Clement only got hit by 10 pitches. And, the American contribution to the 2009 Seattle Mariner's plunk count may be minimized even more, now that the team has added Franklin Gutierrez, who got plunked 8 times with the record setting 2008 Indians, and fellow Venezuelan Jose Lopez should be bringing in some plunk momentum to the season after getting plunked 7 times in the Venezuelan Winter League in 187 plate appearances. The only cause for hope that the American Mariners will step up their HBP contribution is the presence of Mike Sweeney at spring training, as a non-roster invitee, and maybe the leadership of Ken Griffey Junior, who has been hit 80 times in his career. Sweeney has had a 15 plunk season before, and that would equal the American contribution to the 2008 Mariners if he could make the team and do that again.

But the real point isn't that the American Mariners need to get hit more than the foreign born Mariners - it's a team effort and they all need to improve to get out of the basement of the HBP standings - which will very likely bring them out of the basement in the win/loss columns. But the US players should be living up to the standards of the rest of the league - last year, US born players got hit once every 104 plate appearances. No country with more than 10 players in the league had a higher rate of taking plunks for their team. So, don't let anyone come in and tell your team that it could be better off bringing in foreign players to deal with their getting hit by pitches, because they can't do it better than Americans... except for a few stray Australians and Koreans. They're pretty good.

Here's the 2008 plunk rates by country of birth, just because you need to know these things (countries with 0 HBPs excluded):

Country	Batters	PA per HBP	HBP
Australia	6	39.5	2
South Korea	4	84	5
USA	938	104.5	1274
D.R.	126	116.5	167
Mexico	20	119.1	8
Panama	5	122.9	7
P.R.	37	140.6	51
Venezuela	83	140.7	99
Cuba	13	152.3	12
CAN	17	163.8	20
Japan	19	185.5	21
Colombia	3	467.7	3