Plunk Everyone

HBPs of note: August 11, 2009

Eleven batters got hit by pitches around the league, but there were a couple of really bad examples of the art of the plunk on display in Boston. First, Miguel Cabrera put together a textbook display of how not to use your elbow pad. He got plunked in the first inning by Junichi Tazawa, and for some reason the replay shows him ducking his elbow pad out of the path of the ball and getting hit on the hand. That's distinctly not how you do it. He left the game with a bruised hand (though not until after the inning was over, so he didn't need a pinch runner). For Tazawa, that was the 1st hit batter of his major league career.

Then later in the next inning, Rick Porcello hit Kevin Youkilis and that was the 5,925th time a batter born in Ohio was hit by a pitch. Youk was so excited by this, he wanted to celebrate and rushed out to the mound yelling "5925 for Ohio! WOoooOO! Give me a hug!" and Rick Porcello yelled "That's ridiculous! I'm uncomfortable with your affection! And that's not even a round number, why are you so excited about an arbitrary milestone like 5,925?" and the fans yelled "Yoouuuuuuuk" (because they do that no matter what he does), and his manager yelled "This is the inappropriate time and place to celebrate!". And the benches emptied and everyone jumped around trying to seperate the over-excited Youkilis from the uncomfortable Porcello. And then the umpire, misunderstanding the whole situation, threw both Porcello and Youkilis out of the game. But aside from all that, it was the 10th plunk of the season for Youkilis, and his 2nd in the past 2 days. It was the 52nd of his career. Porcello is a rookie and that was only his 2nd career hit batter.

In Milwaukee, Braden Looper hit Kevin Kouzmanoff with a pitch, bringing Kouzmanoff within one HBP from the Padres career record. Kouzmanoff has been hit 34 times, while the most plunked Padres ever, Gene Tenace, got hit 35 times. Hopefully someone told Brewers catcher Jason Kendall about this, so he could point out that he's been hit 37 times on Tuesdays alone.


Shin-Soo Choo got his 20th career plunk, and Roy Oswalt got his 5th career plunk. Oswalt joins Mike Hampton as the only active pitchers who have been hit 5 times. Oswalt's HBP was also the 998th at Land Shark Stadium (though the park didn't have that name for most of them).

Labels: HBPs of note, Kevin Kouzmanoff