As Mike Shannon might say, a baseball game broke out at the beanfest Tuesday night in Pittsburgh. In the Cardinals’ 7-1 loss to the Pirates, the two teams combined to hit three batters, after a homestand in which the Cardinals endured seven HBPs in four games.

Todd Wellemeyer’s arch attempt to dot Freddy Sanchez notwithstanding, Cardinal pitchers haven’t kept pace with the number of the team’s batters’ beanings. Predictably, this has led to the complaint that Tony La Russa’s teams need to do more to protect their own. Assuming that the best way to either deter or avenge plunking is to hit batters as often as one’s own batters are hit, does the data back up the claim that TLR’s Cardinal teams are soft?

Let’s look at HBP rates for the Cardinals since La Russa joined the club for the 1996 season. We’ll consider the rate at which the team’s batters have been hit compared to the rate at which its pitchers have hit opposing hitters:

With a rate of getting hit double that which they are returning (or is it initiating?) the favor, the Cardinals are definitely looking weak so far in 2009. But historically, the TLR-led team has not exhibited proclivity toward sissiness. In fact, their pitchers have often outpaced the league average and their own batters’ HBP rates. For the 13-year period (plus 2009), Cardinal pitchers hit batters at a rate of about one every 100 batters, 9% more often than the league average (0.90%) and about 8% more than their own batters have been numbered (0.91%); they’ve outplunked the league every year since 1997. Furthermore, there hasn’t been any recent trend that would suggest that the team has made a policy of backing down: since 2005, Cardinal pitchers have hit opposing batters more often than their own batters have been hit. If anything, the staff during La Russa’s tenure has been a relative band of headhunting thugs.

So it’s reasonable to expect that the team will reclaim its territory and respect by gradually cutting into its “HBP deficit.” It may not begin tonight, on account of the heightened awareness of the umpires, but look for the team’s pitchers to assert themselves this weekend. If, come the All-Star break, the team is still getting pegged twice as often as they’re dishing it out, perhaps the pitching staff needs a good talking-to — or a fresh face or two.

This entry was posted by Pip on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 2:08 pm and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.