Friday, June 10, 2005

average guys

A lot has been written (mostly here) about who's been hit by the most pitches, and who's been hit be the fewest pitches, but what about the guys in the middle? Baseball rewards the extremes, but what about the majority between those extremes? Someday, as a companion to the All Star Game, maybe MLB could put on an Average Guys game featuring all those utility infielders and journeymen with solid middle of the road stats that become fan favorites.
Until then, here's the top 5 players whose career HBPs per season come the closest to the Major League average for the seasons they played. Darryl Motley is the most average, getting hit 0.7143 times per season from 1981 to 1987. The league average for that time frame was 0.7149 (including every player with at least 1 plate appearance).

HBP per seasonLeague AverageCareer
Darryl Motley0.71430.71491981-1987
Rich Chiles0.83330.83271971-1978
Tommy Neill0.50000.50081946-1947
Goody Rosen0.57140.57031937-1946
Nelson Santovenia0.85710.85581987-1993


Top 5 most average get-hitters among active players (stats through '04):

HBP per seasonLeague AverageCareer
Jose Offerman*1.13331.12501990-2004
Todd Walker1.27271.26261996-2004
Randall Simon1.33331.31491997-2004
Jayson Werth1.33331.35722002-2004
Marcus Thames1.33331.35722002-2004
Jamey Carroll1.33331.35722002-2004

*Offerman might not actually be active at this point.

And just for comparison, and to mention Craig Biggio, here are the Top 5 most above average get-hitters among active players (through '04):

HBP per seasonLeague AverageCareer
Jason Kendall19.66671.26031996-2004
David Eckstein19.00001.37082001-2004
Craig Wilson17.75001.37082001-2004
Reed Johnson16.00001.37362003-2004
Craig Biggio15.05881.09691988-2004

2 Comments:

At 6/10/2005 06:32:00 PM, Blogger Earl said...

Hmmm....Tommy Neill only had 50-something PA his whole career. Because of this small sample size, it's hard to tell if his freakishly average HBP ratio is real or just a fluke. Maybe he's not so amazingly average after all?

(How about average pitchers?)

 
At 6/10/2005 07:43:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

a guy named greg williams, catcher for the SC Knights got hit 4 times in one game. Beat that Craig.

http://www.scknights.com/news/2005/news_spring4.html

 

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