Alex Castellanos got hit by a pitch in his first major league plate appearance last night, and it sounds like he’d be joining a pretty rare club. But, as it turns out, he’s the 24th player since 1969 to do that, and the list includes last night’s Dodgers’ starter Chad Billingsley.
Below is the list, with the pitcher who hit them.
Carlos Ruiz got hit by 7 pitches in May, and that makes him the easy choice for Plunk Everyone Player of the Month for May 2012. The last 7 plunk month in the majors was April of 2011 by Carlos Quentin. When Ruiz holds his press conference to accept the award, we can expect him to thank Tommy Hanson, Gio Gonzalez, Daniel Bard, Lucas Harrell, Jon Lester, Jake Westrbrook, and Kyle Lohse for their contributions to his winning this award.
The American League award goes to Asdrubal Cabrera for his 4 HBPs and .714 Bacon. Luke Scott, Matthew Joyce and Travis Hafner also got hit 4 times for AL teams in May, but Cabrera batted more consistently, so he gets the American League Plunk Everyone Player of the Month award for May 2012.
Dodgers starter Chad Billingsley threw his 40th and 41st plunks last night, hitting Brewers batters Corey Hart and Edwin Maysonet. Maysonet hadn’t been hit in the majors before, and that makes him the 251st players in Brewers history to get hit by a pitch, and the 14th Brewer this year to take a plunk. The last time a team had 14 different batters get hit by a pitch by the end of may was 2004 when the Blue Jays had 14 and the Royals had 16 different batters plunked before June started. The only other team to do that since the Brewers franchise began was the 2002 Tigers with 14. If the Brewers keep up their current HBP per game pace for the full year, they’ll be hit 105 times, which would be a post-1900 record.
The Brewers returned fire with one plunk by Kameron Loe who hit Alex Castellanos. That was Castellanos’ first career plate appearance, and he didn’t get to bat again in the game. So for now, Castellanos has a perfect 1.000 career OBP, and an even more perfect 1 HBP per plate appearance. We’ll see how long he can keep that pace up.
70hbp – Johnny Mostil, born 06/01/1896, 214th all time, played from 1918 to 1929
25hbp – Brad Wilkerson, born 06/01/1977, 1171st all time, played from 2001 to 2008
21hbp – George Decker, born 06/01/1869, 1404th all time, played from 1892 to 1899
19hbp – Hank Severeid, born 06/01/1891, 1525th all time, played from 1911 to 1926
17hbp – Ken McMullen, born 06/01/1942, 1652nd all time, played from 1962 to 1977
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