Hey guys i was screwing around and decided to look at the league leaders in hit by pitch. 3 of my guys were in the top 25. But one of them is a part time player who had half the at bats of everyone else. That made me wonder if there is something in a batters ratings that makes him get hit by pitches.

So I traced a few players just for fun, back several seasons, and sure enough they are always among the top 2 or 3 on their team in getting beaned.

I can't seem to find a pattern. I thought it may have something to do with temperment. No pattern spotted. Maybe push pull tendency. No pattern. Maybe right handed batters since there are more RH pitchers (coming inside). Nope in fact one of them was a switch hitter. Batting eye? Bad eye gets hit more? Nope. Some had good eyes and some bad. The only thing i found that was close to a pattern is two of the guys had 0 rating for temper. But some of the others were total hotheads so that's not it either.

I don't think it is batting order because a couple of these guys have moved from team to team and still get beaned. Same result.

I wasn't very scientific, just screwing around but I saw enough to believe there is something there.

And I believe that if i can find what makes it happen it will be significant. That guy with very few ABs that I was looking at is getting hit about once every 24 plate appearances. Other guys get hit once every 400 or 500 appearances.

If you can find that guy that's going to get hit by pitches that's like 40 extra points on his OBP. And that is very significant. Especially if other owners don't spot it. Do you have any of those crappy players that have bad EYE but still seem to have a large disparity in between AVG and OBP? It's probably because they are getting beaned a lot.

Any of you guys that have the same team every year, check it out. It could be total coincidence but i found the guys that got hit a lot were always in the top 2 or 3 on their team EVERY SEASON. I went back about 4 seasons.

All I know for sure is that it's not totally random. There is a rating somewhere that makes some guys get hit more. There has to be, whether it's hidden or not.

Is there any other common high rating?  Like baserunning IQ, for example? or a high split?

I just checked the HBP stats in my worlds and it looks totally random.

Look at the career leaders in your world....you probably won't find anyone with a Temper rating over 40 (and usually much lower).

Because it's a relatively infrequent occurance, season numbers can look random.  But the career numbers show that temper is the common rating.

I didn't believe you, so I just checked the top 5 all time HBP leaders in my worlds.  Here are their temper ratings:

GAP: 0, 0, 0, 13, 0
MG 9, 19, 0, 1, 15
Regulars: 17, 1, 19, 35, 23

That's a neat little tidbit.

So WIS thinks that pitcher's are afraid of having the mound charged? They come across a guy they know won't charge and every pitcher treat's him like their *****?

I'm convinced it's not random at all. In my two games today I had one guy hit in each game and it was 2 of the 3 guys that always get hit. Both have 0 temper ratings. That must be the rating in play. Whether it's a good rating to use or not is besides the point. This can be a big advantage if you are trading for minor leaguers. Once a guy has an established big league track record it doesn't matter because people will know what their OBP is at the ML level. But if you are looking at a minor leaguer who hasn't made it to the show yet it gives you a small advantage. Seriously if you find one of those guys who gets hit 1 time out of every 25 his OBP is already at .040 and you haven't even accounted for his hitting or walks.

I'm gonna go do a little research on my 2nd year catcher and post it here in a minute. He is the one that is among the league leaders with very few PAs.

http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=2623271

He's been hit 15 times already in his brief major league career. As you can see his temper rating is zero. Now my math was off a little but I still believe it's significant. Without the HBPs his career OBP would be .282 and with them it is .306. 24 points on an OBP may not seem like a lot but baseball like no other is a game that can be judged on statistics. I believe that's a significant find. Now I don't know what the league average is but this guy is getting hit by a pitch one time every 29.13  plate appearances. 437 plate appearances (at bats + walks + hit by pitch) divided by 15.

By the way, the fact that this guy is my starting catcher might make some of you laugh. But it's just the old "pitch calling" thing. I am a firm believer in that. I'd rather have a GREAT pitch caller that is a poor hitter than a GOOD pitch caller that puts up all star numbers. That's just me. I've got a guy in the minors that makes this guy's hitting look like Mike Piazza and he will be up in 2 seasons. His pitch calling is projected at 100.

I am in my 17th season in Berra and there does seem to be a connection between temperament and hit by a pitch.  Our career leader has 206 hit by a pitch and have a 0 temperament.  The top five all-time leaders, have temperaments under 15 and three have 0 for temperament.  Then I went and checked single season and the same thing is true. 

After reading ths thread and checking my team leaders, I'm also convinced low temper means they'll get hit by more pitches.

So, on the corollary, would it be true that a pitcher with a HIGH temper is likely to hit more batters, being that he's ****** off all the time? 

Now my guy may be an exception here but he got hit in another game today. Get this, he's been hit 8 times this season in roughly 200 at bats and every single time he has been hit it has been by a left handed pitcher. So his splits are also coming into play somehow. I didn't go back and look at all of the game logs. The reason i know this is because his batting average and OBP against right handers are the same. In other words, every walk he's taken and every time he has been HBP'd it has been by a lefty. I love trying to figure out the game engine. Not sure this little tidbit will win me any championships soon but it's still kind of fun.

Posted by kcden on 9/5/2010 7:13:00 PM (view original):
So WIS thinks that pitcher's are afraid of having the mound charged? They come across a guy they know won't charge and every pitcher treat's him like their *****?

I think you have it backwards kc. Temper rating reflects 'how well' a guy responds which is to say that a higher rating would mean a better response to the adversity so the guy would go to first and move on. The lower temper guys are the ones that would charge the mound, get thrown out or just generally be thrown off their game for a while.