Was thinking about how Kevin Millar’s high OBP for the season was because he got plunked a fair bit, but then realised Millar gets plunked a fair bit in general anyway. If he got plunked at his 2004 rate (17 HBPs), he would have been hit 3 times. As it is, he’s been hit 5 times, which is high, but seems statistically possible.
In fact, quite a bit of Millar’s OBP value is in his HBPs. His career OBP (not counting 2005) is .366. If he never got plunked, his OBP would be .350. If he got plunked at another first baseman’s rate - let’s say new Sox signing John Olerud’s - his career OBP would be .360.
So I wouldn’t say Millar’s being plunked is a total fluke for his OBP: for some reason he gets hit fairly often. Which brings me to twitch124’s post that noted that replacement players - players recruited during the 1994-95 strike - were 1.3 times more likely to get hit by pitches than other players. I decided to break the data down further and look at who exactly was getting hit.
`HBPs / Plate Appearances / Rate of HBP
All 16145 1827143 0.00884
Replacement players 215 18454 0.01165
Non-replacement players 15930 1808689 0.00881`
This is just the original info - that replacement players are hit once every 86 plate appearances, versus once every 114 PAs. But I decided to look at specific replacement players, and just called up the 7 names that looked most familiar:
Kevin Millar 47 2905 0.01618 F. Menechino 29 1330 0.02180 Lou Merloni 17 1193 0.01425 Brian Daubach 24 1532 0.01567 Benny Agbayani 15 1254 0.01196 Damian Miller 15 2545 0.00589 Shane Spencer 17 1867 0.00911``Without all 7 'big names': 51 5828 0.00875 Without Millar, Menechino, Merloni, and Daubach: 98 11494 0.00853
As can be seen, taking out the HBP of the more well-known replacement players basically makes the HBP rates of both replacement and non-replacement players equal. In fact, just taking out Menechino, Millar, Merloni, and Daubach makes the rates equal. Which is to say, the main difference in the apparent higher rate of replacement players being hit is that there happen to be 4 players in the bunch who are particularly adept at getting plunked.
What does that all mean? Hard to say, really. You could argue that it reflects Empyreal Environs’ contention that replacement players are not looked upon that favourably, except refined to say that the more famous ‘scabs’ get plunked. On the other hand, Damian Miller’s the only all-star of the lot (albeit somewhat dubiously), and he hardly gets hit. Maybe the best batters learn to get on base whatever way they can. Or maybe it’s just a small sample size, and by some fluke the replacement players happen to include a few people who happen to get hit a lot.