Saturday, September 24, 2005

more wrigley wildcard work.

On September 24, 1997, Mark Clark plunked Craig Biggio and began an interesting stretch of Craig Biggio's hit-by-pitch history. From September 24, 1997 to May 10, 1998, Craig Biggio was hit by Mark Clark, Jeremi Gonzalez (Sept. 25 1997) , Orel Hershiser, Al Leiter, Kerry Wood, and Steve Woodard, making that the longest streak of pitchers to plunk Biggio in alphabetical order.
That will be a tough thing to repeat beginning this weekened, because the Cubs are sending Carlos Zambrano and Jerome Williams to the mound today and tomorrow. Zambrano plunked Biggio on May 31st and August 12 of 2003. Jerome Williams has never hit Craig Biggio, but he has hit 33 batters in just under 3 season.

4 Comments:

At 9/24/2005 05:25:00 PM, Blogger pjm said...

Every time I think, "I've really seen it all, now," you come up with something else. Alphabetical order? What's the longest *reverse* alphabetical order streak? Has he ever been hit by a pitcher whose last name can be spelled entirely with letters representing hexadecimal numbers (a-f)? More than one? In numerical order?

 
At 9/26/2005 06:35:00 AM, Blogger pbr said...

Biggio's reverse alphbetical streak record 5 plunks, but he's done that 3 times, but only twice by 5 different pitchers.
8/24/97-9/1/97 by Jamey Wright, Paul Byrd, Jason Bere, James Baldwin, and Joel Adamson
6/12/2003-6/22/2003 by David Wells, Oscar Villareal, Ismael Valdes, Erasmo Ramirez, and Joaquin Benoit.
and, if you want to count it,
7/15/2001-8/18/2001 by Jake Westbrook, Mike Matthews, Andy Benes, Jimmy Anderson, and Jimmy Anderson. That's the same Jimmy Anderson, but it was 2 different games.

There are no pitchers who plunked Biggio whose names can be spelled with just the letters a-f and no musical names that can be spelled with musical notes (a-g).

 
At 9/26/2005 06:44:00 AM, Blogger pbr said...

Oh, and that 6/12-6/22/03 streak contained the only 3 game streak of pitchers to plunk Biggio with first names that begin with vowels (Oscar Villareal, Ismael Valdes, Erasmo Ramirez)

 
At 9/26/2005 12:51:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

On the topic of alphabets, has there ever been a comprehensive list compiled of HPB leaders for each first surname letter (Biggio is the top target whose surname begins with B, likewise Tucker for T, etc.)?

It might be a monumentally crazy task to determine the all-time most popular first surname letter of plunkees, though I wouldn't be surprised if Biggio and Baylor skewed the results. I guess it would have to be normalized by the number of players in each category to get a true picture of which letter yields the most plunks per player...

 

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