285!!
Joe Smith, in the 12th inning, with a baseball.
Biggio didn't score after the plunk, and the Astros lost 5-3 in 17 innings, but Biggio has 285 career plunks.
Smith is now the 7th pitcher to plunk Biggio in extra innings, and the 4th extra inning plunked with a 3 letter first name - the other three were all named Tim. The average length of first names of pitchers who have plunked Biggio in extra innings is 3.6 letters.
Plunk 285 was Biggio's first extra-innings plunk at Minute Maid Park. He had only one previous extra-innings HBP at home, and that was in 1993.
Joe Smith was the 213th pitcher to plunk Biggio, but the first with the last name Smith - even though more people named Smith have pitched in the Major Leagues than any other last name. Through last season, 64 Smiths had pitched in the Majors, but none plunked Biggio until last night. That leaves Johnson as the last name with the most pitchers in major league history, but without one who plunked Biggio.
Smith is also the first pitcher born in 1984 to hit Craig Biggio with a pitch, and set a new record among the pitchers who have plunked Biggio by being 18.27 years younger than Biggio. Scott Feldman was previously the youngest member of the 213 member club - he was born in '83, which makes him a little over 17 years younger than Biggio. Biggio was never plunked by anyone more than 12.5 years older than him.
Smith is the 17th 23 year-old to plunk Biggio.
6 Comments:
Someone said that he hit Biggio with the very first pitch. If that's true, do you know how many people have hit Craig with the very first pitch they ever threw at him?
Has Biggio ever been hit by a pitch with the bases loaded? A simultaneous HBP and RBI?
It was the very first pitch. Smith is a sidearm pitcher and the pitch just got away from him. Bidge's hbp came with 2 outs so once again, he kept the inning going. Unfortunately, the Astros couldn't score as Pence popped up.
Smith also plunked "Baby Bidge" Chris Burke later in the game when he had moved to 2nd base.
I wonder how many pitchers have plunked the replacemment 2nd baseman/outfielder after Biggio left the game?
Way to go Craig Biggio!
He's now back in the "projected to break the record this season" course!
This is baseball history in the making, and this site is both making and breaking that history as it happens. Good show!
Yeah, too bad they eventually lost the game...
For anonymous, I'm working on the question of first matchup plunks, and first pitch plunks. I should have that sometime in the next couple of days, as a post.
For DM, yes, Biggio has been hit 7 times with the bases loaded, but there are quite a few other players with more RBI plunks than that.
And the end of season projection was up to 288 before yesterdays game, but it's back to 287 after that game (before rounding, it went from 287.52 to 287.46). But, projected plunks based on a year-to-date plunks per game average is really not something you should put much faith in as a method of forecasting. Now that he's over the 3000 hit thing, I expect his plunk rate to go up in the 2nd half of the season.
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