streaks

Craig Biggio made it through the weekend without getting hit by a pitch. Shea Hillenbrand got hit Friday to tie Lew Ford for the Major League lead at 10, but Biggio doesn't seem to have taken that as a personal challenge. Despite not getting hit, Biggio is on a 5 game hit streak and the Astros are on a 5 game win streak. Biggio's longest getting hit streak was 3 games, most recently in 1998 from June 20 - 22. He also had 3 game plunk streaks from April 29 - May 1 1997 and August 30 -September 1 1997.

The Astros travel to Camden Yards today, to face Hayden Penn and the AL East leading Orioles. Penn has started only 3 games and never hit anyone with a pitch yet, but he has walked 10 and has 1 wild pitch, so the potential is there in the 20 year old Righty. He'll have a shot today to become the youngest pitcher ever to hit Craig Biggio with a pitch.

Rolando Arrojo hit Craig Biggio with a pitch on June 13th, 2000.

Yesterday's Baltimore Sun discussed Biggio's record chase in it's Flip Side column, although mostly it's about this site, but it's worth reading just for the odd story (unrelated to Biggio) the author ended the article with.
And Mike Carminati at Baseball Toaster had another good study of HBP stats, this time focusing on pitchers, and crossing a lot of things of my to do list. Among the list of most above average plunkers he posted, 8 pitchers have Plunked biggio a combined 24 times. Among the list of least plunk happy pitchers, only Kirk Rueter has hit Biggio, but he did it twice while only hitting 22 other batters.