Parker: Is getting hit by pitches a skill?

From SABR member Bill Parker at Baseball Prospectus on August 23, 2012:

You don’t read much about the hit by pitch, except tangentially, and then only when some pitcher gets in trouble for throwing at some hitter. For the most part, the HBP just isn’t that interesting; it doesn’t happen often, and when it does, it doesn’t mean all that much. The run-value result of an HBP is basically indistinguishable from that of a walk, and it happens about a tenth as often. HBPs can be exciting or aggravating or scary when they happen while you’re watching a game, but after the fact, if no one got hurt or suspended, they’re hard to care about.

Some guys are really, really good at getting hit, though, and I’ve always thought they were pretty interesting. Carlos Quentin is the overall leader among players to have compiled at least 2000 plate appearances since 1961 (I put the cutoff, somewhat arbitrarily, at the onset of the 162-game schedule; heres the top 200)—he’s been hit by pitches in 4.1 percent of his career plate appearances, better than the career walk rates of Yuniesky Betancourt, Miguel Olivo and Bengie Molina. All those plunkings do add up; if Quentin’s 4.1 percent HBP rate were reduced to the 2012 NL average of 0.76 percent, he’d have 21 career HBP instead of 112, and his career .349 OBP would drop all the way to .326.

So it’s not a small thing, not at the extremes. Quentin’s skill at getting hit by pitches has, on a per-PA basis, been a big part of his value, transforming him from a more or less average hitter into quite a good one.

But here’s my question: is it a “skill”?

Read the full article here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=18102



Originally published: August 23, 2012. Last Updated: August 23, 2012.