ages and innings

It's common knowledge that the average age of the pitchers who have hit Craig Biggio with a pitch through the 2005 season was 28.50 years, but you may not have heard that the average age of the pitchers who have plunked Biggio in 2006 is also 28.50 years. It's not exactly the same - 28.50388 to 28.50064, but this year's seven plunks have only moved the average age of the group down 0.00008.

Here are the year by year average ages of pitchers who hit Biggio with pitches, as well as the career averages as of the end of each season. 2006, or course, is season to date.

Year	Season Avg. Age	Career Avg. Age
1989	30.21	30.21
1990	27.32	29.25
1991	29.67	29.32
1992	27.11	28.46
1993	30.06	29.03
1994	29.09	29.05
1995	28.67	28.90
1996	27.99	28.61
1997	26.76	28.08
1998	28.50	28.15
1999	31.15	28.37
2000	31.99	28.71
2001	27.31	28.51
2002	27.89	28.46
2003	28.04	28.41
2004	29.02	28.45
2005	29.32	28.50
2006	28.50	28.50

Pitchers who hit Craig Biggio with a pitch in the 4th inning tend to be the youngest, on average, at 27.37 years old, and the 139 HBPs that he's accumulated in the first 4 innings have been thrown by pitchers averaging 28.29 years old, while the 141 pitches he's been hit by in the 5th inning or later have been thrown by hurlers averaging 28.71 years of age. The 14 9th inning plunks have been thrown by pitchers with the highest average age at 29.90 (excluding the small data sets in the extra frames). The 7th inning plunkers have the 2nd highest average age at 29.17, but that has been dragged down this season by three 7th inning HBPs thrown by pitchers averaging 26.06 years.
Biggio's 4 other HBPs this season have come in the 3rd and 6th inning, and the average age for both of those innings has increased this season. 3rd inning plunkers have averaged 30.07 years old this season, raising the average fro 29.09 to 29.16. Pitchers who have hit Biggio in the 6th inning have averaged 31.13 years old this season, raising that average from 28.36 last year to 28.48 now.

Inning	Average Age	HBPs
1	28.23	56
2	27.83	15
3	29.16	41
4	27.37	27
5	27.51	35
6	28.48	22
7	29.17	38
8	28.98	26
9	29.90	14
10	29.37	3
11	30.97	1
12	32.29	1
13	26.73	1

Tonight's pitcher, Paul Maholm is about 24.12 years old.