Surely Dave "Stats" South will mention this sometime today, but, does anyone know what the record for most HBP delivered by a team in a conference series is? "Mew" must be getting close after the first two games this weekend...

where are we at now 7, 8 for the series?

5 Friday and at least 3 yesterday (lost track at that point). So...8+ is pretty impressive in 2 games.

My post from the game thread:

quote:

---

Retaliating is SOOOOO much more than revenge. Its a psychological aspect of this game that Childress refuses to acknowledge. His inaction breeds a lack of self confidence and a lack team work. The batters have to know that they will be protected on the flip side if anything happens to them. But we don't partake and it simply breeds a lack of cohesiveness.

I was pleading from the hills when Luke was getting pluncked L and R. I think in one game he was hit something ridiculous like FOUR times. I actually had to debate many ppl on this board on whether or not it was intentional. Unbelievable.

Teams are going to continue to do what Missouri has done this weekend until we step up and let them know we won't accept it anymore.

Many will be happy with the 2-1 weekend and thus the charade will continue.

---

Holden,

Dude, our batters step into the baseball. 95% of the time that our guys get hit, it is not even remotely intentional. This is how we defend the inside corner while still covering the outside corner. If a pitcher makes a mistake inside, we get hit.

Even before today's game we have been hit 28 times to our opponents 14. Last year it was 93 to 45. The year before that it was 100 to 69. This is OUR style.

[This message has been edited by Goose06 (edited 3/28/2010 4:02p).]

Dude, Goose... 13 times this weekend. Nobody else has hit us that much even if we're "stepping into" pitches. Just Misery being Misery...

We crowd the plate more than any other team I've ever seen in college baseball. The past several years, we've had record numbers in the HBP column. I don't think Mizzou was throwing at us, just missing inside.

Just saying, even if we do crowd the plate, 13 times is quite a few, and much more than we've ever seen...

So I guess every other team we play is the same way. We lead the nation in HBP if I had to guess. Its not because we don't retaliate either. Its because we defend the inside part of the plate. Some of our guys do it more aggressively than others. This year its Shofner and Greene primarily. Last year it was Anders and Shofner. The year before that it was Anders and Darby Brown.

At one point, Arthur was down in the count, he tried to pick his front leg up and move it in to get hit. We try to get hit in addition to crowding the plate.

No, I'm not saying anything about us not throwing rebuttal pitches. I'm just saying this series has been abnormally high.

I will give you that its been abnormally high. But we average about 6 per weekend over the last 3 years so its not like 13 is some crazy number. Its not like we average 2 and got hit 13 times. We doubled our average. I am sure there will be weekends where our pitchers hit a lot more guys than normal too.

my biggest concern is that only 1 of the 13 hit batters crossed home plate

quote:

---

Holden,

Dude, our batters step into the baseball. 95% of the time that our guys get hit, it is not even remotely intentional. This is how we defend the inside corner while still covering the outside corner. If a pitcher makes a mistake inside, we get hit.

Even before today's game we have been hit 28 times to our opponents 14. Last year it was 93 to 45. The year before that it was 100 to 69. This is OUR style.

---

Nice. Now its our fault.

Its not our fault. There is no fault. It is our hitting approach. You have to be able to cover the inside and outside corner. We cover both by crowding the plate. If the pitcher comes inside and misses off the plate, we get hit. It deters pitchers from coming inside.

just coincidence that Smith gets hit 3 times today after his game-winning hit yesterday???

I will actually give you that the Smith HBP's are very likely intentional. He is not one that normally takes a lot of HBP's. He was 8th on the team in HBP last year with just 5 all season and he had 0 coming into today this season.

I am more arguing Holden's ridiculous argument that we don't retaliate and thats why we get hit all the time. All that really proves is that Holden does not watch much baseball and certainly does not watch Aggie baseball.

The first one that hit Smith was squarely in the middle of his back.
Crowding the plate or not, many of those beans had intent.

Our pitchers have hit a lot of people this year but I seriously doubt there was intent. With the way our bullpen has been all year, giving up needless baserunners would not be a good idea. Both teams have similar approaches at the plate and each team has been hit 30+ times this year.

quote:

---

I will actually give you that the Smith HBP's are very likely intentional.

---

Its easy to argue when you straddle and waffle both sides of the argument.

Holden, I use judgement in making the determination. Smith doesn't lean into pitches like Shofner, Greene, Juengel, Parsons, Collazo, and even Arthur. Patterson doesn't lean in or crowd the plate, but he doesn't try to get out of the way and pitchers come inside on him to keep him honest (like any big hitter). Because I have observed Smith and know he is not the kind of guy to crowd the plate, I know that its rare for him to get hit. So for it to happen multiple times in a game, right after he had a walk off hit, it was probably intentional.

However, to say any of those HBP's with guys like Shofner, Greene, Patterson, etc were intentional is just a guess on your part. Watching on the video is impossible to tell with as bad of quality the video is.

I remember most of them getting hit in the hips and not just barely getting hit by the ball. So it's not like it was a result of them crowding and the pitcher missing.

Ha, so you really believe that Missouri hates us so much that they would bean us on purpose ~13 times? Seriously? Come on dude.

Guys and Girls,

Last time I checked the rule books if a player is hit with a pitched ball they get a free base!

If pitchers aren't throwing at Ag's helmets I would love to see it continue. More runners on base usually equals more runs crossing the plate!

quote:

---

Ha, so you really believe that Missouri hates us so much that they would bean us on purpose ~13 times? Seriously? Come on dude.

---

Yeah, I said that and all... I just said your little theory of us crowding the plate and pitchers missing inside is probably wrong since some were thrown up at the shoulders and hit out players closer to their back than their front. Fact is, they hit our batters a LOT more than they are normally hit.

Fact is our guys get hit twice as much as our oppontents so you shouldn't be surprised when we get hit a lot. Pay attention to how close we get to the plate, how willing we are to take one in the back, shoulder, thigh, etc, and how much our guys don't even seem to care when they get hit. You rarely see our guys jawing at the pitcher after a HBP. Instead, they trot down to first base. The only guy who seems to be frustrated by a HBP is Patterson. There are going to be exceptions to this, but in general, our guys are happy to have the free base.

Sure, we do crowd the plate. But more than twice as much as our "average" is pretty ridiculous. I don't know how many batters they've hit before and all, but that was an abnormally high amount. More than doubling our weekend average (are you sure our weekend average is 6 per weekend?) IS quite an outlier. But I know for fact that Shofner and Brodie were pissed. Shofner was mad the first night according to his father the next day (and he got hit a few more times on Saturday and Sunday), and I could tell that Brodie was pissed when he got hit. But oh well, the series is over, nothing stemmed from it, and we won the series.

The elbow, on the other hand...

6/weekend is based on the average over the last 3 years. This year is a little less than that I think, probably closer to 4.5 or 5.

Completely agree on the elbow. Had that guy played on Sunday, I would have expected retaliation. I would have hoped it would come from someone who throws harder than Ehlert though.

[This message has been edited by Goose06 (edited 3/29/2010 10:57a).]

Haha, get Stilson in there. Nothing against Elhert, but I'd much rather see him in relief because he usually has a few good innings but one or two very bad innings.

I would like to see Ehlert as our midweek long reliever honestly. I don't trust him on the weekend in any capacity except long relief in a high scoring game where we have a nice lead (say 10-4 in the 5th inning).

Ehlert has had some good innings out of the bullpen. I also think he could really do well in a middle relief role.