Nobody leaves until...
I'm looking forward as much as anyone to seeing Craig Biggio reach the 3000 hits plateau, but some of the ideas coming out recently to get him there are going a bit far. For example, Russ Springer had some extremely controversial ideas in Alyson Footer's column on Sunday. Springer's theory is that Biggio should "Stop taking walks. Stop getting hit. Get 700 at-bats."
Then, last night the Astros unveiled their new "Nobody goes home until Craig Biggio gets a hit" rule. Biggio saved his hit until the 12th inning, when he doubled and scored the winning run, but he did not get hit by a pitch. Again, I want to see him reach 3000 hits as much as anyone, and it serves as a great incentive to keep playing and keep stepping into the batters box, but I don't thing Russ Springer's "Stop getting hit" idea is at all necessary. 26 others have 3000 hits, but nobody has ever reached 300 HBPs. 3000 hits and 300 HBPs has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?
Today the Astros travel to San Francisco to face Matt Morris and the Giants. Morris is well known to the Astros from his many years pitching for the Cardinals, where he hit Craig Biggio with a pitch on September 19, 2003. The Giants, however, haven't hit Biggio with a pitch since 1999 and he has never been hit in SBC Park.
Craig Biggio has never been hit by a pitch on April 11th.
1 Comments:
Yeah, Kendall has an excellent chance to break the record after Biggio retires. At some point I'll update the post I did last season on this subject, but if Kendall doesn't break it there aren't very many active players who look like they have a shot.
Kendall will be interesting though. He's got an epic homerless streak going, and you'd have to think he can't afford to let his batting slip any more if he wants to keep playing at an 18-20 plunk per season level for another 5 years. Also, he'll be a free agent after '07, coming off $13mil that year, so it'll be interesting to see where he ends up and for how much.
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