274???
If you are the sort of person who had nothing better to do in the offseason than to go look at Craig Biggio's stats page on MLB.com, you might have noticed something odd. The HBP column lists 274. But this site lists his total plunks as 273. Well, so does espn.com, and cbs.sportsline.com. The general agreement of the rest of the internet is that Craig Biggio has been hit 273 times, with 17 in the 2005 season. MLB.com lists 18 for 2005.
One conclusion readers of this website might jump to is that maybe MLB officially overturned the infamous Lost Plunk in some sort of offseason statistical re-justicing. But, they didn't.
Taking a look at the game log for 2005, the extra plunk can be found on September 21st vs. Pittsburgh. The mlb.com box score lists Craig Biggio being hit by a Matt Capps pitch. Every other site shows that plunk belonging to Chris Burke. Also, the corresponding MLB.com story explains that Craig Biggio left after three innings, but Matt Capps only pitched the 8th inning.
MLB.com appears to have taken all of Chris Burke's stats for the game on 9/21/2005 and assigned them to Craig Biggio. Why? It remains a mystery. Hopefully someone will fix it before too much confusion is caused, casting shadows over the inevitable plunk that breaks Hughie Jennings' record. If anyone has a logical explanation for this I'd like to hear it. If anyone has an illogical explanation for this I'd like that even more.
UPDATE: As of July 24, 2006, MLB.com appears to have corrected all the stats associated with this problem.
4 Comments:
bud selig and the rest of his crew like to juice up the game to break all those old records, so this move may just be indicative of their eagerness to see another record broken sooner rather than later.
but come on, I think we all know that Biggio has it in him to break the record legitimately, so no worries there. I think the next logical step in solving this question is a Congressional hearing. there really is nothing else that can put all of our minds at ease.
by the way, your pbr handle just makes me think of one thing, and it's not biggio. it's pabst blue ribbon...ummmm, beer!
So your theory is that the ball may have bounced off of Burke, moving back and to the left, and then struck Biggio, who - despite being in the dugout - still refused to move away from a pitch that was about to hit him? Hmm... Burke bats right handed, the Astros - visitors at PNC park - would be in the 3rd base dugout, there's not a lot of foul territory there, and the win was blowing in from right field. It all adds up. Except, the wind was only 3 mph... perhaps there were gusts?
We needs some grainy film reels to settle this.
what we really need is kevin costner to adopt a spot-on texan accent and detail the entire event in tenths of a second intervals with some giant posterboard diagrams and a pointer.
Also it probably wouldn't hurt to review the game film from the day in question and look for tommy lee jones in the stands.
I'd like to suggest the plunker on the grassy knoll theory....
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