more facts about Biggio's nearly 3000 hits

Craig Biggio's single of Claudio Vargas was his second career hit of Vargas. At the moment, there are 160 pitchers against whom Biggio has 2 career hits. Since there are 160 of them, and those pitchers have each given up 2 hits to Biggio, that means that as a group they've allowed 320 of Biggio's 2,997 hits, and that's more than any other grouping. There are 275 pitchers Biggio has one hit off (for a total, obviously, of 275), and 55 pitchers who Biggio has 5 hits again, for a total of 275.

But, if you take all the pitchers Biggio has faced and group them by the number of hits Biggio has against them, the group that has plunked Biggio the most are the pitchers who he hasn't gotten a hit off of. Biggio has been plunked 35 times by pitchers against whom he's never hit safely. 34 pitchers have plunked Biggio but not given up a hit to them, with Jorge Julio being the only one to hit Biggio twice, but never allow a hit against him. Five other pitchers have given up at least one hit to Biggio, but still have given up more plunks than hits.

Here's the total number of pitchers who have given up each number of hits to Biggio, along with the total hits and total HBPs for each group, and his batting average against pitchers in each group:

BGOhits	# of pitchers	total hits	total HBP	Avg
0	376	0	35	0
1	275	275	29	.280
2	160	320	31	.320
3	88	264	14	.332
4	68	272	14	.282
5	55	275	26	.303
6	33	198	20	.305
7	32	224	22	.349
8	10	80	10	.271
9	19	171	14	.304
10	12	120	10	.335
11	9	99	11	.306
12	16	192	13	.301
13	3	39	1	.302
14	4	56	1	.238
15	6	90	6	.309
16	6	96	4	.330
17	2	34	6	.266
18	2	36	7	.321
20	1	20	0	.278
22	1	22	3	.250
24	1	24	0	.245
25	1	25	3	.410
27	1	27	1	.260
38	1	38	2	.299

If you do some math from that chart, you can see that Biggio has faced 1,182 pitchers in his career, and they've given up an average of about 2.5 hits to him. More than half his hits have come against pitchers who have given up 6 hits or less to him. And, for some reason, Craig Biggio doesn't hit very well against the pitchers he has 14 hits against. (luckily, the only one of those 4 pitchers who is active this year is Curt Schilling, and the Astros won't be seeing him - so their's no point running to your favorite message board or sports radio show demanding Biggio be benched due to his low batting average against pitchers he has 14 hits against - even if Mark Loretta does have a .368 average against pitchers he has 14 hits against)

Here's the same data, grouped by number of times each pitcher has plunked Biggio:

HBP:BGO	# of pitchers	total hits	total HBP	Avg
0	970	1877	0	0.278
1	163	695	163	0.287
2	34	259	68	0.288
3	12	119	36	0.274
4	1	12	4	0.293
5	1	17	5	0.327
7	1	18	7	0.327

As you can see from this, most of his hits have come against the large majority of pitchers who have not plunked him, but his career batting average is .287 against those who have hit him, and .278 against those who haven't.

Biggio has faced 342 pitchers who have neither hit him or given up a hit to him. But he only has a total of 833 plate appearance in that group. Josh Beckett holds the record, facing Biggio 18 times without giving up a hit or hitting him, but Beckett did walk him once. Kelly Downs faced Biggio 11 times without hitting, walking or giving up a hit to him, but Biggio did reach on an RBI fielder's choice once againts Downs. Michael Wuertz holds the record for most times facing Biggio without allowing him to reach base, at 9 times.


Most of this data is available on baseball-reference.com which has complete and up to date stats for Biggio against every pitcher he ever faced here. Which, clearly, I find very handy.