Pittsburgh - land of Pirates

The Astros wrapped up their series with a somewhat wacky 8-5 loss to the Nationals yesterday. The baseball axiom "you can't steal first" comes to mind. Craig Biggio had only 1 pinch hit plate appearance and did not get hit by a pitch. For the 4 game series, the Nats threw 629 pitches to the Astros, and missed them with 99.3% of them.

Houston moves on to Pittsburgh, hoping they can find some wins there this weekend. Ian Snell will be the first pitcher they face at PNC park. Snell has only hit 2 batters in his career, and while he has never plunked Biggio, he did plunk Brad Ausmus. 99.88% of Snell's 1,704 career pitches have missed the batter.

Frank Castillo plunked Biggio on May 26, 1996. No one else has hit him on this date before or since.