victor z is theirs

Victor Zambrano takes the hill for the Mets today. He has never hit Craig Biggio with a pitch, but has hit 6 batters this year. That puts him in a 13 way tie for 4th in the majors, 1 plunk behind the three leaders. In 2003, Zambrano hit 20 batters as part of the Devil Rays team which set the modern record for hit batters in a season. That was the first team since 1899 to hit 95 batters.

Biggio has been hit twice on June 8th, first in 1993 by Jose Deleon, and more recently in 2000 by Alan Mills.

Reader Rastronomicals emailed Plunk Biggio to point out that Craig Biggio's HBPs contribute more of his on base percentage than any other player with more than 10,000 plate appearances. Through 2004, Biggio's HBPs contributed 6.47% of his OBP, and his ratio of times reaching base to HBPs was 15.45. This means that for every 15.45 times he reaches base, 1 of those is going to be via the plunk. Taking a look at the other end of this stat, Harold Baines only got hit by a pitch once out of every 281.57 times he reached base. And, just to prove that it's not always about extremes, Fred McGriff got hit once per 98.31 times reaching base, making him the player closest to the category average. Ted Williams, the all time leader in On Base Percentage, got hit by a pitch only once every 120.87 times he reached base, but he took time off to defend the country in 2 wars so he only had 9789 plate appearances.

Rastronomicals' email also asked how Biggio ranked if the plate appearance cut off were dropped to 5000, so here it is. Hughie Jennings is the all time leader with 1 plunk in every 7.53 times reaching base. Sandy Alomar Jr has reach base 491 times for every HBP.
Top ten OBP to HBP% ratios among players with 5000 plate appearances

Hughie Jennings	7.53
Ron Hunt	9.16
Jason Kendall	11.53
Don Baylor	12.01
Damion Easley	15.09
Craig Biggio	15.45
Minnie Minoso	15.46
Andres Galarraga	17.38
Brady Anderson	18.02
Chet Lemon	18.38

And the bottom ten:

Sandy Alomar Sr.	491
Jerry Mumphrey	481
Jose Cruz	450.86
Vern Stephens	426.17
Garret Anderson	410.2
Otis Nixon	393.8
Ruben Sierra	387.43
Jim Hegan	386.75
Mickey Mantle	320.08
Granny Hamner	314.33