but what about the Rangers?
The Texas Rangers come into the 2006 interleague portion of the season with a 75-80 record against National League teams, and a 14-16 record against the Astros. Overall, Rangers pitchers have hit 57 National League batters, and their batters have been hit 40 times in interleague competition. Against the Astros, they've been hit 10 times, and hit Astros batters 13 times (both are team highs against the National League). 4 of those pitches hit Craig Biggio.
Rangers' pitchers hit about 1 of every 89 Astros batters they face, ranking the Astros 6th in plunk frequency by the Rangers' hurlers. The Phillies are #1 on that list, with the Rangers hitting them once per 56.5 batters (though it's only been 2 plunks). National League teams comprise 9 of the top 10 teams on the Rangers batters faced per batters hit list, and throughout Rangers history (up to '05) they have hit 57 of 6213 National League batters, or 1 per 109, and only 1,456 of 202,197 American League batters, or about 1 per 139. The only American League team in the top ten is the Devil Rays - the Rangers have hit them once per 106 batters.
The Rangers have never had a pitcher named Smith hit an opposing batter, and even if they had, the Rangers came into existence 7 years too late for there ever to have been a Ranger Smith who plunked Yogi Berra.
3 Comments:
I have a question. With all the fuss over Barry Bonds and Russ Springer, I'd like to know if a pitcher (or pitchers) has ever been ejected from a game for plunking Bigg.
If anyone would know, it would be you!!
It's kind of hard to know for sure because retrosheet doesn't always specifically list ejections for the older years (pre-2000). The closest one I know of is the September 5, 1995 brawl filled game with the reds. The box score is here and the video is at Astros Daily.
But, in that game Xavier Hernandez had to hit Biggio and Bagwell on consecutive pitches to get ejected (and trigger a brawl), and there had already been a bench-clearing incident earlier in the game, so technically he didn't get tossed just for plunking Biggio.
Thanks for the info!
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