just another sac fly in DC

Craig Biggio was out of the starting lineup last night, but he did contribute an 8th inning sacrifice fly, driving in an insurance run in the Astros 4-2 win. But - it's Carlos Lee that's supposed to be chasing a sac-fly record, and Biggio's supposed to be chasing the all time HBP record. Lee is still 7 sac flies away from breaking the single season record, and Biggio is 3 plunks away from breaking the all time HBP record.

Today may well be Craig Biggio's last chance to get hit by a pitch at RFK Stadium, but reports suggest he may be starting the game on the bench once again - to the disappointment all the Craig Biggio fans in the Nation's capital. Jason Bergmann is schedule to start, but he'd never plunked Biggio and hasn't hit a batter yet this season. He did hit Brad Ausmus once though.

Craig Biggio has been hit by three pitches on July 18th - in 1989 by Sid Fernandez, and twice in 2001, by Mike Matthews and Andy Benes.

That Andy Benes plunk might be the one mentioned in Greg Garber's excellent article on Biggio and the HBP record, currently on espn.com, but Benes did hit him one other time in 2001. Tim Marchman of the New York Sun also has an article about the plunk record which throws in some nice perspective on Hughie Jennings. By some strange coincidence, this space posted a link to a Tim Marchman article last year- while the Astros were playing the Nationals, at RFK. Last year, he seemed to be arguing that milestones were overblown and I said "Maybe he'll feel better if someone breaks an all time record sometime soon".

Anyway, thanks again to Greg Garber for taking the time to speak with me about the HBP record, and my attempts to set a record for most blog posts about a single statistic. It's even more remarkable that Garber took that time to speak with me when he probably he could have been interviewing Maria Sharapova.