further draft notes
Note from yesterday: the data used for these draft analysis bits include the sandwich round with the first round of the draft. Sandwich round picks who have hit Biggio with a pitch include Rocky Biddle, Stan Spencer, Mark Petkovsek, Jamey Wright, Calvin Schiraldi and Pete Harnish. But, the rules aren't entirely clear to me so I may have added or removed some from this list. Contrary to popular belief, Rich Garces, David Wells, Bartolo Colon and Jeff Juden were NOT drafted in the sandwich round.
In 1987, Craig Biggio was drafted in the first round, 22nd overall, by the Houston Astros. Since then he has been hit by a pitch 270 times. The 21 players drafted ahead of Biggio in '87 have a total of 123 HBPs led by Ken Griffey Jr. with 74. The entire first round of the '87 draft not named Craig Biggio has 189.
Through 2004, every player drafted 46th or later since 1987 had a combined total of only 214 HBPs. The 31 players who have made the bigs after being drafted in the 20th round have been hit 307 times, making the 20th the lowest draft round to have a combined total of more plunks than Biggio (since 1987).
Among 1st round picks, the 22nd slot where Biggio was draft is only second in total plunks in the Craig Biggio era, trailing the 23rd picks. The 23rd picks include 108 time plunk victim Mo Vaughn and Jason Kendall, who is the second most plunked active player with 190.
The second most plunked 22nd pick ever drafted was Chet Lemon, with a not at all shabby 151 plunks.
1987 draft first round (players who had at least one plate appearance in the majors):
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* Pitcher who plunked Biggio.
6 Comments:
The first round of Biggio's draft year seems to have been pretty heavy on pitchers (including AL pitchers whose careers were over before inter-league play began), so it's not surprising that the plunk total excluding Biggio's contribution is low.
It's also quite clear that a single prolific plunkee can easily skew the totals for his group.
Out of curiosity: What are the totals by draft position (22nd vs. 23rd)? Given that Biggio & Lemon have 120 more plunks than do Kendall & Vaughn, I imagine it must be awful close...
As usual, in order to spread confusion and skew things to make Biggio the focus of interest (lies, damn lies, and statistics) I was sort of switching back and forth between all time draft spot totals and totals of guys drafted since Biggio. SO, the 22nd vs 23rd comparison doesn't include Chet Lemon. As of the end of 2004 it stood at 306-274.
The all time stats have #1 picks winning with 805 plunks, with the #22 picks in 5th at 562 (all as of the end of '04).
Sorry for the confusion, I couldn't quite decide on the best way to look at this one when I wrote it, so it goes in a lot of different directions at once.
In reference to the previous Maddux post: Biggio was not hit in the game that 89 pitches (is my addition right?) were thrown...I was wondering about ratios of total pitches in a game by opposing pitchers to biggio plunks...it seems he would be more likely to get plunked the higher the pitch count goes, but do the stats bear that out?
Tom, total pitch count would be a good thing to look at, but so far I haven't found a site with all the box scores including pitch count. I usually use retrosheet.org but they don't list pitchcounts. ESPN.com has it for the past few years anyway. I'll see what I can dig up, but I'm not sure if anyone kept track of it before Joe Kerrigan came along.
I can tell you that Chad Bradford is the only pitcher to hit Craig Biggio with the only pitch he threw in a game. June 7, 2002, top of the 8th, in relief of Mulder at Oakland.
Please tell me that these stats are being combined into a book about Craig. It would be such a waste not to publish this as a coffee table book. Oh yeah, I would buy it.
Well if anyone knows a publisher, have them email me (plunkbiggio at gmail . com). I'd be happy to put this stuff together into a coffee table reference (or multivolume encyclopedia), I just need to figure out how to get it published. And then there's the question of whether to wait until Biggio has retired, or go ahead and do it and publish updated editions in later years.
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