Plunk Everyone

As you may have noticed, nobody got hit by a pitch in World Series game 1 last night. That made it the 4th consecutive year that nobody got hit in game 1 of the World Series, and the 68th plunk-free World Series game 1 of all time. But tonight, Pedro Martinez is facing AJ Burnett. Burnett hit 4 batters in the first two rounds of the postseason this year, which means he's tied with Roy Oswalts 2005 postseason, and Pedro Martinez's 2004 postseason for the most plunks by a pitcher in a single postseason run. Pedro, meanwhile, is facing the Yankees. He's already hit them 4 times in the postseason - no other pitcher has plunked the same team more than 3 times in his post season career. He has also hit 17 Yankees in the regular season, which is more than any other active or recently active pitcher.

On the other hand, of those 21 regular season and postseason plunks Pdro has thrown at the Yankees, only 4 hit a batter who was in last night's yankees line-up. He's hit Alex Rodriguez twice (both times in the 2004 ALCS), and he's hit Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada just once each. He's never hit Damon, Matsui, Cano, Cabrera, Teixeira or Swisher. But there's a first time for everything.

Also on the list of never-done-before feats of plunkery, there has never been a major league HBP on October 29th - every other day in October has had at least one plunke recorded, but no one has ever been hit on the 29th. But, there has also never been a game on the 29th of October (which just brings up the question one more time of why this is the latest starting date for a world series ever - a day later than the 2001 world series game 1 which was postponed for legitimate reasons, and in a year when neither LCS went 7 games. Stop it MLB, just stop it.)

Lastly, the Yankees have been hit 99 times in postseason history. Wouldn't it be nice to have Pedro's name go into the history books as the pitcher who threw the 100th pitch to hit a Yankees batter in the postseason?