like night and day
So far this season, there have been 672 day games played in the major leagues, and with about 150 remaining on the schedules of the 30 major league teams, it looks like we're on pace for 822 day games this season, which would be the most day games played in any of the past 20 seasons. If you had known this at the beginning of the season you might have said "That's great - I know that Biggio gets hit by a pitch about once every 8.4 day games compared to about once every 10.7 night games - he'll break the record for sure!".
But it hasn't quite worked out that way - due to his reduced schedule Biggio has played in just 31 day games this season and started only 15 of them. With only 2 day games left on the schedule, this might be the first time season since 1991 in which Biggio was not plunked in a day game.
Even if he was playing every day game this season though, the league-wide rate of plunks per game is down 4% from last season, and down 9.3% in day games. Only 470 batters have been hit by pitches in day games this season, and an optimistic projection would bring the total to 575 by the end of the season. (I'll leave it up to you to determine whose idea of "optimism" that is). This looks like it will be the first year since 2002 in which plunks per night game will exceed day plunks per day game. There have only been 4 such seasons during the span of Biggio's career.
Overall, from 1988 through yesterday, batters have been plunked 0.64 times per game in day games and 0.61 times per game in night games. This years numbers are 0.70 for day games and 0.73 for night games, which are still above the 20 year average but well below the 2006 rate of 0.77 batters plunked per day game, and slightly below the 0.74 night game hbppg rate.
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I am so flummoxed as to this log jam in the plunk count that I can’t get my mind off logs. All I do is sit around contemplating about logs and sticks and twigs and branches and the like. I see whole forests of logs jamming up and prohibiting the plunks to commence. Good Lord, all we need is three! All I ask is for three more little plunks to zero in on Target and get him over the hump and beyond that Hughie Jennings feller. I’m so preoccupied that I done commenced to going out back and chopping on the woodpile. It helps relieve the stress a mite, and it will be useful come winter as we use the wood to heat up the double wide trailer in our old cast iron heating stove. I chop a bit, then find myself gazing off to the treeline thinking about Baseball and plunks and records and the end of the Biggio Era and then I snap out of it and chop me some more. Mama said she don’t mind because I am starting to get a good pile of kindling and we can use it come cold season. I just don’t know. I am starting to see my hope dashed again the rocks of despair and it pains me no end. The number of at bats is quickly dwindlin’ and them three plunks appear to be further out of reach than they been since day one. This is keeping me nights. I reckon I’ll g out and chop more. Mama tells me her cousin Bernice is heading our way (that’s Mary Jane’s girl and she plans to stay with us a while until she and Lester work things out). That might keep me outside choppin’ more than you might think. Lord I can’t stand that girl.
Chopping you say? Like the tomahawk chop that the fans of the Atlanta Braves enjoy doing? The same Atlanta Braves who will be visiting Houston for the last three games of this season? On Craig Biggio appreciation weekend?
Could it be that the spirits of all your past prognostication inventions have collected in your woodpile to give us a clue to the date when the record will fall?
Also, we're going to the game tomorrow night (friday) and the last time I saw an Astros game in person (spring training '06), he got hit the day before the game I went to. But that was spring training so maybe we can't count on a plunking tonight.
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