Doesn’t change the fact that there might be more incentive for pitchers to hit batters, if they know that they won’t have to face a pitch themselves.
Nor does it change the fact that DH is dumb.
Since AL pitchers don’t hit batters more often, any talk about AL pitchers having more “incentive” to hit batters is not only unsupported, but directly contradicted by the simplest of logical equations: If A, then B. Not B. Therefor, not A.
This one case where baseball statistics actually mean something.
No argument.
Really?
From here:
I did my own comparison one time and did not note that large a discrepancy. However, I was looking at team by team stats, and pitcher by pitcher stats, not league by league stats. There were spikes for certain teams, esp. the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, that have a revolving door of young and inexperienced pitchers. I wonder if the writers of this report looked at team by team stats and how a few teams that don’t invest in pitchers can throw off the average.
Player by player stats did not show that either American league pitchers hit more batters, or that the pitchers who hit the most batters tended to be AL pitchers. In fact, Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson were very close and way above everyone else, which means that THIS year, the two most famous bean ballers are NL pitchers. At least this week. We’ll see where Big U is next week.
I shouldn’t have said “throw off,” but “impact.” If the discrepency is that large, it is not evident by either comparing average AL teams to average NL teams, or average AL players to average NL players. Interestingly enough, I did this research trying to prove that AL pitchers DID hit more batters, but my theory didn’t hold water. Subtract one bad team and the averages were the same. I don’t presume for one second that only Tampa pitchers had an added incentive to hit batters. I just assumed they sucked.
The average AL team hit 46.7 batters this year, the average NL team hit only 34.06.
If you say so. I haven’t looked at this year’s stats.
Actually, the Red Sox have hit more than the Rays. And NL average is brought down by the Braves, who have hit a remarkably low 13 this year.
My point was (and I do have one) is that, save for the extremes of the Sox, Rays and Braves, the numbers aren’t that far off.
I was just coming in with that same observation. If “average” team means “typical” team, rather than an average of all the teams playing, then the difference isn’t that great. More importantly, it contradicts the notion that AL pitchers have more incentive to hit batters. Looking at it straight on, team by team, it doesn’t look like they do.
How many of those plunks were aimed at Yankee batters? Why, 50. 11 from the Red Sox, 10 from the Orioles, and 9 from the Devil Rays.
Christ, I should be sleeping instead of looking at baseball stats.
NONSENSE!
Hope this works.
Team by team list of being hit by pitches
Oddly enough, the Pittsburgh Pirates have been hit the most.
Now admittedly, I’m not a huge sports fan (unless you count dog shows and [horse] competitive jumping or dressage shows).
But…I work in a male-oriented bar, which means our big-screens TVs are always tuned to sports channels.
At this point, I really enjoy basketball, and even though I don’t really “get” it, can enjoy football quite a bit.
Baseball, however, completely eludes me…it’s like watching paint dry, as far as excitement factor goes…AFAIC, it’s right up there with watching golf, bowling, or pro poker. (which is to say, not at all, IMO…though I’d rather watch pro poker than the aforementioned…at least watching that I might learn something).
I do have to say, that watching the bench-clearing brawls almost makes me enjoy baseball more though.
Hell, if y’all had more of em, I might actually enjoy watching it. 
Chestplate, yeah. Not so much the mask. There’s the risk of having it twisted, or pulled and snapped back. Mildly surprised A-Rod didn’t do anything like that. Especially after Varitek’s dick move of rubbing his face. That’s a “deterrent to physical retaliation”?
It was pretty obvious that A-Rod was nailed intentionally. When walking toward the mound, he was using Dick Cheney words at the pitcher. But Varitek threw the first punch- he was most in the wrong. I didn’t see Pedro involved at all, perhaps because there wre no Yankee coaches in their 70s to fling to the ground.
Statistics can at times be misleading. Most hit batsmen are curves that get away from the pitcher. There aren’t any stats on HB that are accidental and true beanball pitches.
I’m not afraid to put IHBP on my score card, but they don’t have that as a stat.
The same guy who conducted the study i quoted above has more to say on the topic here. It makes for quite an interesting read, and also contains links to pdf copies of his earlier research.
The subtitle of the website is “Economic Thinking About Baseball,” and it has links to a bunch of other interesting stuff.
And if you want to read their whole long article on the subject, including a bunch of arcane economic and statistical analysis, you can check out the beautifully-named paper: Moral Hazard on the Mound: The Economics of Plunking (warning: pdf).
This is turning into a thread on plunking, so here are two of my treasured sports memories:
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one of my favorite moments in the history of baseball was when Torii Hunter was hit by a pitch, grabbed the ball, and threw it back with equal velocity at the pitcher, nailing him in what some journalists called “the upper leg,” but I remember vividly as “the ass.” The pitcher was Danys Baez of the Indians (now of the D Rays).
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Bert Blyleven, now an announcer for the Twins TV feed, is a champion of the bean ball. Back when Jack Cressend was with the twins, he once refused to relatiate by throwing at hitters after a Twin got plunked. A year later, he DID plunk a batter and was thrown out of the game. Blyleven said, without a trace of irony, “That shows how much Jack Cressend has grown as a player.” Both of those games were also against the Indians… The 2000 and 2001 seasons saw a lot of dugout-clearing brawls and hit batsmen when the two teams played, but now things have cooled off a bit.
FTR, Kapler and Lofton were ejected along with Varitek and A-Hole, but the announcers (Sox radio, not just Fox) did not know that until after the game. Pedro stayed in the dugout just in case someone inspired by Don Zimmer would have gone after him.
I don’t have any proof, but it does *seem * to me that hit batsmen (the only use of the word “batsman” remaining in baseball AFAIK) have been charging the mound much more often in the Steroid Era than they used to. Time was, and I’m not that old, that the pitch was almost always presumed to be accidental, it being stupid to put a man on base in most cases. But the players today who can be expected to just drop the bat and jog to first are now exceptional, not typical - Jeter is one.
I’d have loved to see Clemens step into the box in front of Piazza the next inning after the broken-bat throw, wouldn’t you?