Plunk Everyone

Here’s how this year’s All Star rosters would look if position players were selected by who hit the most foul balls. Which is obviously ridiculous, because they SHOULD be selected by who gets hit by the most pitches.

AMERICAN LEAGUE

CATCHER
A.J. Pierzynski (CWS) – 238
J.P. Arencibia (TOR) – 211
Kurt Suzuki (OAK) – 175

FIRST BASE
Adrian Gonzalez (BOS) – 299
Prince Fielder (DET) – 223
Carlos Pena (TB) – 221

SECOND BASE
Ian Kinsler (TEX) – 277
Kelly Johnson (TOR) – 245
Gordon Beckham (CWS) – 230

THIRD BASE
Miguel Cabrera (DET) – 263
Mike Moustakas (KC) – 253
Adrian Beltre (TEX) – 249

SHORT STOP
Derek Jeter (NYY) – 286
Jhonny Peralta (DET) – 234
Cliff Pennington (OAK) – 230

LEFT FIELD
Alex Gordon (KC) – 250
Josh Willingham (MIN) – 214
Dayan Viciedo (CWS) – 188

CENTER FIELD
Adam Jones (BAL) – 266
Curtis Granderson (NYY) – 248
Alejandro De Aza (CWS) – 228

RIGHT FIELD
Josh Reddick (OAK) – 295
Jeff Francoeur (KC) – 289
Ichiro Suzuki (SEA) – 247

DESIGNATED HITTER
David Ortiz (BOS) – 228
Kendry Morales (LAA) – 210
Billy Butler (KC) – 206

NATIONAL LEAGUE

CATCHER
Buster Posey (SF) – 251
Miguel Montero (ARI) – 227
Carlos Ruiz (PHI) – 202

FIRST BASE
Frederick Freeman (ATL) – 282
Joey Votto (CIN) – 216
Yonder Alonso (SD) – 214

SECOND BASE
Brandon Phillips (CIN) – 251
Danny Espinosa (WSH) – 247
Dan Uggla (ATL) – 240

THIRD BASE
Hanley Ramirez (MIA) – 291
Chase Headley (SD) – 257
Chris Johnson (HOU) – 229

SHORT STOP
Dee Gordon (LAD) – 260
Ian Desmond (WSH) – 251
Starlin Castro (CHC) – 241

LEFT FIELD
Ryan Braun (MIL) – 270
Matt Holliday (STL) – 248
Alfonso Soriano (CHC) – 229

CENTER FIELD
Andrew McCutchen (PIT) – 240
Michael Bourn (ATL) – 236
Angel Pagan (SF) – 223

RIGHT FIELD
Hunter Pence (PHI) – 224
Jason Heyward (ATL) – 226
Jay Bruce (CIN) – 205

DESIGNATED HITTER
Mike Morse (WSH) – 82 (34 as DH)
Jim Thome (BAL) – 61 (30 as DH)
Jason Giambi (COL) – 68 (22 as DH)

Yesterday, Corey Hart hit a foul ball. That doesn’t sound like news, but yesterday was the first time he’d hit a foul ball since May 31st, so he was 0 for June in foul ball hitting. He snapped a streak of 22 consecutive plate appearances without fouling a ball out of play. And that’s kind of weird.
So, here’s where that streak ranks on the list of consecutive plate appearances without a foul ball since 2005:

2012 Foul Ball team leaders through May 10

2012 foul balls against (by pitching team)

Foul Ball individual leaders (season totals)

There’s been a trend for a while now, that batters like to “work the pitch count”, and hit a lot of foul balls to tire out the opposing pitcher. It might not be a real trend – it might just be something baseball announcers like to talk about, or praise a batter for “battling”, and taking a lot of pitches in a plate appearance. Or, it might just be clever marketing by the guys who buy ad space on those scrolling signs behind home plate. They probably slip a few bucks Dustin Pedroia to foul off a lot of pitches so their sign will stay on TV longer. But anyway, it kind of makes you wonder if hitting a lot of foul balls does anybody any good… and in my case, it makes me wonder if pitchers who give up a lot of foul balls are more likely to plunk someone.

On the plunk rate thing, the results are inconclusive – here are the HBP rates groups by the number of foul balls the pitcher had given up so far in that game, at the time of the HBP. (For 2011 game data, through May 26)

So… they hit batters the most before they’ve given up 5 foul balls, and then… well there’s not exactly a clear trend there, but it’s all pretty close. I think we can safely say that at least this year, hitting a lot of foul balls off a pitcher doesn’t make that pitcher more likely to hit someone. The total HBP rate this year is one plunk per 122.1 batters, at the moment.

But what about individual batters? Do all their foul balls get annoying and make the batter hit them as the game goes on? Here are the rates by the batters total fouls hit during the game:

It looks like hitting 3 foul balls will increase your likelihood of getting an HBP, but any fouls you hit after that are going to make you fairly unlikely to be plunked.

While we’re at this, how does that work for fouls in a single plate appearance? Here are the rates base on the foul balls hit in each plate appearance:

So a batter with three foul balls in a plate appearance gets hit once per 291 times, but a batter with three foul balls hit in the game gets hit once every 94.3 plate appearance… kind of makes you think there might not be any connection at all between these stats… but lets brush that aside.

And now, here’s the batting stats other people might care about. Below are the popular offensive numbers, grouped by number of foul balls hit in the plate appearance.

Of course the problem with hitting a lot of foul balls, is that the batter is spending a lot of time in 2-strike counts, so it kind of makes sense that hitting a lot fouls is not healthy for your offensive numbers. If you’ve already hit two foul balls (or have two strikes) you can help your cause a little bit by fouling off a couple of more pitches – but you’re not going to help it much. If you can get from 2 fouls to 5 fouls you can pull that situational OPS up from .523 to .699. And that’s only a few points below the league average.

Oh right, but the benefit of hitting lots of fouls is supposed to be evident later in the game when you’ve worn the pitcher down. Lets see how well that works – Here’s the opponents batting numbers based on the number of fouls a pitcher gives up in a game:

If you take a look at that table of numbers, you’ll notice… that they pretty much don’t change. Look at the OPS column – it barely changes until you get into the tiny sample sizes. The overall league OPS this year is .707, and the opponents OPS based on the number of foul balls the pitcher has given up barely moves from that number. So what’s that supposed to mean, that managers are just SO good at watching pitchers pitch counts that they pull them out before they give up so many foul balls that they start to struggle?

If anyone is getting tired and starting to struggle after all these fouls, it looks more like it’s the batters.
Here are the batters offensive numbers, split by the number of foul balls they’ve hit in the game:

Here are the league leaders this year, in unnecessarily tiring themselves out by hitting so many foul balls:

Here it is two days into July, and you probably have no idea who’s leading the league in hitting foul balls.  You’ve probably already filled out your 25 all-star ballots without that key piece of information.  60,105 foul balls have already been hit and you probably don’t even know that Dustin Pedroia leads the league, having hit 301 of them.   Pedroia has hit 0.5% of all foul balls hit in the majors this year, even though he certainly does not account for 0.5% of total major league players, by weight.  As far as we know.

But before we get to the individual leaders, here’s a quick breakdown of foul balls by batter and pitcher hand:

It seems that right handed batters have hit about 1% more foul balls per pitch than lefties this year, and right handed pitchers have given up about 1% more foul balls than left handed pitchers. So, if you’re a fan of increasing souvenir baseballs hit into the stands, you’ll want to push for more right handers in the game, but if you’re one of those people who thinks the games are taking to long, you should advocate more lefties, since less foul balls should mean a shorter game.

Anyway, here are the 2010 league leader in foul balls.

2010 foul ball leaders (as of 7/1/10)

*Plate appearances, for this purpose, may include situations where a runner was put out to end an inning, but the batter had already taken some pitches, or hit some foul balls.

And, here’s a bunch of other stuff you might want to know, in case you’re interested in the fact that Johnny Damon is 15th in foul balls by left handed batters or that David Wright has hit the 5th most fouls against right handed pitchers, or that Daric Barton has hit the most left handed foul balls against right handed pitchers with 205.

2010 Foul leaders by Right Handed Batters (as of 7/1/10)

2010 Foul leaders by Left Handed Batters (as of 7/1/10)

2010 Foul leaders vs Right Handed Pitchers (as of 7/1/10)

2010 Foul leaders vs Left Handed Pitchers (as of 7/1/10)

2010 Foul leaders – RHB vs RHP (as of 7/1/10)

2010 Foul leaders – RHB vs LHP (as of 7/1/10)

2010 Foul leaders – LHB vs RHP (as of 7/1/10)

2010 Foul leaders – LHB vs LHP (as of 7/1/10)

Most of this year’s playoff races have been over for a long time, with the exception of a couple of teams torturing their fans by refusing to clinch their divisions, but there are some statistical races of note that could still come to exciting conclusions in these last three games, if you’re willing to care about some things that maybe not everyone is excited about.

First, and possibly most importantly, is the American League Most Plunkable Player race. Chase Utley has the NL locked up, but the AL race looks like this:
Kelly Shoppach – 18
Brandon Inge – 17
Shin-Soo Choo – 17
Kevin Youkilis – 16

It might be tough for Youkilis to take 3 plunks in meaningless games while resting for a playoff chase, so he’s probably not going to do catch Shoppach. Brandon Inge, on the other hand, is still trying to clinch a division title for the Tigers, so he might be doing whatever it takes to get on base. So there could be an exciting finish there.

And, since this is Friday, lets look at the foul balls race. Brian Roberts is leading the American League, and has the overall lead with 553 foul balls this year. He’s got a commanding lead over 2nd place AL foul ball hitter Carl Crawford who has 517. But in the NL, Andre Ethier, Todd Helton and Pablo Sandoval are all close with 532, 530 and 523. Just for fun, imagine a world in which suddenly people cared about this and Todd Helton went out on Sunday with the sole purpose of winning the NL Foul Ball title. Like when David Robinson wanted to beat Shaq for the scoring title in 1994 and scored 71 points. Just Todd Helton out there fouling balls off all afternoon. How long would the other team put up with that before just throwing at him or walking him? Could he work through three relief pitchers in one plate appearance? Would the sports pundit world have to tranquilized by a special team of government operatives sent out to save the industry from itself?

Another close one you might not have noticed is the Sacrifice Fly race in both leagues – in the NL, Bengie Molina has a slim lead with 11 sac flies, but Todd Helton and Casey Blake are right behind him with 10. In the AL, Orlando Cabrera, Marlon Byrd and Nick Markakis are all tied with 10. So there could be an exciting moment this weekend when one of these guys has a runner on third and is desperately hoping his foul ball to center field comes down on the warning track for a title winning sacrifice fly instead of just one more unimportant home run. It could happen.

On the pitching side of things, Dave Bush is just one plunk ahead of Johnny Cueto for the National League plunking title with 15 hit batters, so that could lead to some excitment with both scheduled to pitch on Saturday. On the AL side, Joba Chamberlain leads the league with 12 plunks, but Kevin Millwood and Matt Garza have 11, and Tim Wakefield, Ervin Santana, Ricky Romero, and AJ Burnett have 10 each.

Back in the generally unheralded batting statistics, Ryan Howard looks to have locked up the 2009 NL title for total swings of the bat with 1371 so far. Mark Reynolds is next with 1247, so he probably can’t catch Howard unless he goes on a foul ball tear like Todd Helton is planning. In the AL, Aaron Hill has swung his bat 1,266 times this year, which sounds tiring, but he’s only 37 swings ahed of Derek Jeter. Jeter has an outside show at catching Hill. Back in the National League, Ryan Howard has more swings but he trails Mark Reynolds by 15 whiffs. Reynolds has swung and missed a league leading 460 times, while Howard has whiffed 445 times. They’re both far ahead of American League leader Carlos Pena who has missed 346 times but isn’t far ahead of Russel Branyan’s 337 misses. Reynolds leads qualified batters with a miss percentage of .369 – he misses the ball with 36.9% of his swings, while his closest competitor, Ryan Howard misses at a .325 clip. Chris Davis leads the AL in miss rate at .364, and probably won’t be caught by Miguel Olivo who has missed at .355. On the other end of that same idea, Placido Polanco has led the American League this year, making contact with 93.71% of his swings, though Marco Scutaro is right behind him at 93.67% so that’s race could go to either of them. In the NL, Luis Castillo has made contact 93.63% of the times he’s tried to, with Juan Piere right behind him at 93.57%. Dustin Pedroia is fifth overall in the majors, and has a shot to catch the AL leaders with his contact percentage at 93.41%.

In the statistical category I call BACON, Ichiro Suzuki still has a chance to be the first player in Bacon history to break .900. Though Bacon history only goes back to 2005, because that’s all I’ve done with it. Ichiro made it until this week before going hitless in two consecutive games. In the past 5 seasons, no other players has had fewer than 3 instances of back to back hitless games. That’s just some amazing consistency there. In the NL, there is a tight race for the top BACON among qualified batters (500 plate appeances, about) – Felipe Lopez and Hanley Ramirez are both at .796 right now, and Albert Pujols is right behind them at .786.

And one last thing to watch for is whether or not Jeff Weaver will plunk anyone to catch Tim Wakefield for the most plunks of the 00s. Wakefield has hit 107 batters from 2000 to 2009, and is likely done for the season unless someone poisons the rest of the red sox staff and no one else can pitch or something. Weaver may get an opportunity in any of the final games, and has hit 106 batters. He would probably have an easy win in this category if he had played at all in 2008.

Last week I confidently wrote that I was going to post the major league pitching leaders in the category of foul balls allowed, and that I fully expected no one to care about that. But, it turns out that commenter KL Snow (from Brewcrewball) almost cared about it, but was more interested in which pitchers give up the fewest foul balls.

So, here are the ten pitchers who have given up the fewest fouls this year, with a minimum of 500 batters faced:

And here are the ten pitchers who have the lowest number of foul balls, as a percentage of their total pitches thrown (fouls/total pitches):

Now obviously, some of those foul balls count as strikes, so lets see what happens if we exclude the strikes and just look at non-strike fouls – or foul balls hit with 2 strikes in the count. Here are the pitchers who have given up the fewest non-strike fouls:

And, non-strike fouls as a percentage of total pitches:

So those guys are all pretty good about not throwing a lot of pitches that get wasted or fought off and don’t count for anything, except an increase pitch count. While we’re here, we might as well see who gets the most pitches fouled off after two strikes.
Here are the league leaders in non-strike fouls:

tr>

And, the leader in non-strike fouls as a percentage of total pitches:

(And, because I feel the need to say something about people getting hit by pitches,)
Jorge De La Rosa leads the league in giving up non-strike fouls in plate appearances where he eventually hit the batter, with 6. He’s hit 7 batters, but he gave up 6 non-strike fouls to those batters he plunked – the most he gave up in a single plate appearance was 4. On April 25th, Rockies rookie Matt Daley gave up 5 non-strike fouls to Casey Blake before getting tired of that game and hitting him. That’s the most this season, in a single plate appearance that resulted in a plunking.

Ever wonder which pitchers have the greatest number of their pitches turned into foul balls? No? It sounds completely irrelevant to your fantasy league team, and won’t help you figure out exactly what the problem is with your favorite team so you can impress sports radio hosts by calling in and telling them?
Well… here it is anyway.

Total fouls by pitcher, for the 2009 season:

Here are the top pitchers by fouls as a percent of total pitches (500 pitch minimum):

And, while we’re here, how about an update on which batters have hit the most fouls this year:

And here are the batters who hit the most fouls as a percent of total pitches they’ve thrown (500 pitch minimum):

So far this year, batters have hit the most foul balls at the Metrodome, and Land Shark Stadium – that’s interesting because both are scheduled to be replace in the next couple of years. Hopefully the new parks that replace them will be as fan friendly by providing an equal number of souvenirs in the form of balls hit in the wrong direction. (Though I actually have no way of knowing how many of the total foul balls hit in each park actually end up in the seats).

Here’s the park-by-park listing of total fouls, foul rates, and HBP rates for 2009:

*-Foul Balls include foul tips, but not foul bunts or fouls caught for outs. For some reason.

There doesn’t appear to be any connection between ball park plunk rates and the rate of foul balls hit per plate appearance at those parks. The combined plunk rate for the top 15 foul ball rate parks is almost identical to the rate for the bottom 15.

For bonus coverage, here are the 2009 Fan Interference totals by ballpark:
Busch Stadium – 6
AT&T; Park – 4
Safeco Field – 4
U.S. Cellular Field – 4
Oriole Park at Camden Yards – 4
PNC Park – 3
Comerica Park – 3
Progressive Field – 2
Citi Field – 2
Citizens Bank Park – 2
Angel Stadium of Anaheim – 1
Fenway Park – 1
Miller Park – 1
Coors Field – 1
Minute Maid Park – 1
Rogers Centre – 1
Turner Field – 1
(2009 Fan Interference data, as usual, is gathered from MLB’s Gameday files and isn’t particularly official)

The fans at Busch Stadium have handed out 6 ground rule doubles on fan interference calls, but 5 of them were to visiting teams (including two for Craig Counsell). Sometimes clever home fans will grab a ball in play, for a ground-rule double which causes the umpire to send a runner who had scored from first back to third base, negating the run – but that didn’t happen in any of the 5 cases at Busch. It’s possible that any of those 5 could have been triples if not touched by a fan, but th
ey also could have been runners thrown out at third, maybe.
There have only been two of those ground-rule doubles where a fan costs a team a run this year – and both cost the Mets that run. On May 14, Gary Sheffield hit a ground-rule double to left field at AT&T; park that cost Carlos Beltran a chance to score from first, and on April 16th, Mets fans did it to their own team, interfering with a Daniel Murphy hit, and holding Jose Reyes up at third. Beltran scored anyway in the road game, but Reyes did not.
So, keep your hands off balls in play, people. In general though, this year’s fan interference total is way down from last year – there have only been 41 fan interference incidents so far, while last year there were 68. There had been 62 already by this date last season.