43 Responses to “Players with at least one third of their career walks coming intentionally”

1. john Says:
   May 6th, 2011 at 8:10 am

   I'd like to see the columns for batting handedness and where in the batting order they most often hit added.

2. John Bowen Says:
   May 6th, 2011 at 8:16 am

   "If we drop the career requirement to one quarter, lots of new names pop up:"

   Is that...sarcasm? Or did you just insert the wrong table. Cuz they look identical.

   I wonder how many Babe Ruth drew (it's N/A). You'd think a lot, but he also hit in front of Lou Gehrig for about half his career.

3. Andy Says:
   May 6th, 2011 at 8:24 am

   I must have made a cut and paste error, and I'm mobile now so I can't fix it. Bonds, Banks, and Clemente make the top 10. I'll correct post later this morning.

4. Mike Says:
   May 6th, 2011 at 8:51 am

   I'm a little surprised Ichiro is up there. It's not often a primary lead off hitter gets IBB'd.

5. Jimbo Says:
   May 6th, 2011 at 9:12 am

   This makes Vlad a very unique power hitter I guess. He's the only power hitter on the list and he leads it.

6. Andy Says:
   May 6th, 2011 at 9:16 am

   Ichiro is up there because he's a hacker--he rarely takes a walk by choice. Therefore the intentional walks he gets make up a large percentage. This also helps him get lots of hits by rarely giving up a plate appearance to a walk. A .300 hitter who foregoes 50 walks and instead puts the ball in play (or strikes out) will get 15 more hits a season.

7. Paul Hamann Says:
   May 6th, 2011 at 9:24 am

   #4: For almost all of his career, Ichiro has been in a batting order with at least 6 #9 hitters. Since 2004 or so, I'm surprised the opposition doesn't intentionally walk him every time he comes to the plate.

8. TheIronHorse Says:
   May 6th, 2011 at 9:26 am

   Doug Flynn!! Haven't thought of him in years. This is precisely why I love
   this site.

   As the 8th place hitter on some truly lousy Met's teams of the late 70's, I
   can only surmise that all those intentional walks must be the result of
   other teams preferrring to pitch to the Met's pitcher. (Nino Espinosa)

9. Jim Says:
   May 6th, 2011 at 9:27 am

   Ichiro is also up there because the Mariners have done a poor job the last few years putting dangerous hitters behind him, so it definitely makes sense for a righthanded pitcher to walk him with two outs. For example, in 2009, Ichiro was intentionally walked 15 times, and #2 hitters in the Mariners lineup went .224/.297/.376.

   Wade Boggs was a leadoff hitter from 1987-1992, and he led the AL in intentional walks each of those years. It's even more impressive when you note that Marty Barrett and Jody Reed were generally effective batting behind him, with the exception of Reed's 1992 season. Still, both are right-handed, and neither were anything close to Wade Boggs, who went .326/.423/.461 in that six year stretch.

10. joseph taverney Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 9:32 am

    During the '73-74 seasons, Bill Russel of the famous Dodger infield, had 87 BB, 45 of them came intentionally, then he must of moved up in the order, cause he never had double digit IBBs again.

11. Hartvig Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 9:33 am

    Odd mixture of player types. A lot of career number 8 hitters, a leadoff hitter and one who was both (Templeton). Also a lot of catchers, who I guess were getting walked trying to set up a double play because of their speed (or actually lack thereof- except for Sanguillen of course, but he wasn't batting eight either) even though they were generally pretty lousy hitters. I was surprised Clemente didn't make the list but I see he'll be on the one for a 25% cutoff. Just guessing and just off the top of my head but I'd say he'll be joined by Tony Armas Sr., Shawon Dunston, Dave Kingman and maybe Cito Gaston too.

    Fun stuff

12. Andy Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 9:33 am

    The second table has now been corrected!

13. Andy Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 9:34 am

    Tony Gwynn is another guy somewhat like Ichiro...he much preferred to go ahead and hack and put the ball in play. As a result, both guys have OBP that are fairly close to their BA.

14. Doug B Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 10:04 am

    Re: Ichiro or Tony Gwynn. Unless there are 2 outs in the 8th/9th and the tying or go ahead run is on second I would not even consider it. They are going to beat you with singles. My guess is that is how they got most of their IBB.

15. Brendan Burke Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 10:15 am

    I only have two words to say... REY ORDONEZ?

16. Jeff Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 10:19 am

    Bonds had more IBB than Clemente had BB.

17. Jon Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 10:46 am

    Just goes to show that both Doug Flynn and Dale Berra were more feared than Jim Rice.

18. Stu Baron Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 10:55 am

    @8 TheIronHorse: Flynn also batted 8th ahead of Jerry Koosman, Jon Matlack, Craig Swan, Pat Zachry, Roy Lee Jackson, Jackson Todd, Doc Medich, Juan Berenguer, Mike Bruhert, Pete Falcone, Mike Scott, Dock Ellis, Ray Burris, John Pacella, Mark Bomback, Tom Hausman, Scott Holman, Ed Lynch, Terry Leach, Tim Leary, Randy Jones, Charlie Puleo, Dave Roberts, and others.

    @15 Brendan Burke: Simple, Ordonez batted 8th in 837 of 870 games he played for the Mets. I don't have the numbers for his brief stints with the Rays (2003) and Cubs (2004), but I suspect the ratio was similar. No. 8 hitters, esp. in the NL, get lots of IBBs.

19. BSK Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 11:04 am

    Is there a way to filter out 4-pitch, unintentional walks? If we look at this number for Bonds, we might get a sense of how many were unintentional intentional walks. Obviously, they wouldn't ALL be, but if he has an absurd frequency of those relative to the rest of players (accounting for his general absurdly high walk rate as a function of his batting eye), we might be able to make a little sense of it.

20. John Autin Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 11:17 am

    Count me strongly with Doug B @14. I'd bet that most of the IBBs issued to Ichiro did not make good "WPA sense" even if the next batter's ability were accounted for.

    I'll take Doug's position a step farther: I would rarely even consider walking Ichiro unless the go-ahead run were on 3rd base (not 2nd) in the late innings.

    Ichiro does have a .331 batting average, but the rate of baserunner advancement on his hits is extremely low, for some very obvious reasons:
    (1) 81.4% of his career hits are singles;
    (2) an astounding 23.4% of his career hits are infield hits (on a par with Juan Pierre's rate of 24.4%); and
    (3) his hits to the outfield tend to be line drives that don't get into a gap, providing less opportunity for runners to advance more than one base.

    Consider the situation of a runner on 2nd base only, which has accounted for over half of Ichiro's career IBBs (81 of 156). Ichiro has a .365 BA in those situations, which sounds scary. But only half of those hits have scored the runner from 2nd base (78 of 158, 49.4%).

    Believe it or not, Juan Pierre's rate of scoring a runner from 2nd on a base hit is not only higher than Ichiro's, but much higher -- 61.6%. So while Ichiro has a BA edge of .365-.288 in those situations, their rate of driving in the runner from 2nd is almost the same: 18.0% for Ichiro, 17.3% for Pierre. Juan Pierre has drawn only 2 IBBs in those situations.

    Ichiro's career BA is .331. But if you take all his infield hits out of the equation -- which you certainly should do when considering whether to walk him with a runner on 2nd only -- his BA is only .275.

21. Johnny Twisto Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 11:17 am

    You could look at Bonds's event finder and search for all walks on a 3-0 count. That will include intentional walks too, but the play description will say whether it was intentional or not. Then look at the game situation to see if it was likely a pitch-around. Of course, lots of intentional walks start as pitch-arounds, but once it gets to 2-0 or 3-0, the catcher will stand up and make it an official IBB.

22. frank Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 1:08 pm

    I'm surprised Thome isn't on there. He has a ton of walks, and is a power guy, so it seems like he'd be on there.

    But maybe he just has a good eye, and lots of his walks are just because of that?

23. Rich Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 1:15 pm

    Garry Templeton led the NL in IBB in 1984 and 1985. 8th place hitter or not, that's ridiculous

24. TheIronHorse Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 1:23 pm

    @18 Good Job Stu. I had Mark Bomback's autograph for many years. Lost it in the early 90's post college.

25. Admar Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 1:29 pm

    Ther intentional walk stat was first tracked in 1955.

    Rey Ordonez spent over 88% of his career batting 8th - all of his IBB's would have been to get to the pitcher.

    By the way, what's the worst offensive WAR ever recorded by a non-pitcher? (Ordonez was -5 for his career).

26. Andy Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 1:33 pm

    Thome's not even close. He has only about 10% of his career walks coming the IBB route.

27. JDV Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 1:37 pm

    Great to see Sanguillen on this list...definitely a notorious bad-ball hitter. His Wiki page says he's the only player with six straight seasons of 475+ PA and < 22 BB. I remember hearing that he used a ridiculously long bat (40"?).

28. John Autin Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 2:55 pm

    @27, JDV gave me the perfect lead in to note that Manny Sanguillen has the highest percentage of IBBs out of total BBs -- 43% (96 of 223). Only one other modern player with 3,000 PAs has topped 40% (John Bateman).

    Sanguillen's high IBB percentage is somewhat unusual in that he was neither a big offensive threat (.296 BA / .398 SLG, season high of 12 HRs) nor a #8 hitter; 71 of his 96 IBBs came while batting 5th, 6th or 7th, and just 14 while hitting 8th.

    I'll just guess that the Pirates had some weak hitters at the bottom of the order, and/or that opposing managers never really did the math.

29. John Autin Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 3:01 pm

    @25, Admar -- I hate to keep beating the dead horse of Bill Bergen (1901-11), but he's clearly the worst offensive player ever to have a long career, by any measure.

    The 2nd-worst career WAR of the modern era belongs to Doug Flynn, at -12.1. Bergen stands alone, more than 50% worse than Flynn: -17.6 oWAR. Bergen was at -0.7 oWAR or below in each of his 11 seasons, with a nadir of -2.6 in 1909.

    http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bergebi01.shtml

30. John Autin Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 3:03 pm

    Self-correction @29 -- I goofed the mental math: Bergen was only 45% worse than Doug Flynn. There's no reason for hyperbole!

31. Neil L. Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 3:17 pm

    The list is fascinating because it is so heterogeneous.

    I echo Hartvig @11 that it brings together an unusual, dissimilar group of players. My quick reaction is surprise that it contains so few classic power hitters.

    I think the reason for this is that the circumstances that cause an IBB are also diverse.

    (i) Batting 8th in the NL
    (ii) Being feared offensively.
    (iii) Setting up a DP late in a game, with a slow runner on deck.
    (iv) Excessively weak on-deck batter (non-pitcher).
    (v) Better pitching match-up with on-deck batter.

    And perhaps some others.

32. Cheese Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 3:44 pm

    yeah, on bergen:

    1909 line:
    112 games
    346 ABs
    48 hits
    3 XBHs!
    10 BB / 50 Ks
    .139 /.163/.156
    1 OPS+
    18 fielding errors

    And he played 2 more seasons after this!

    Is this the fewest XBHs of any 300+ AB season?

33. John DiFool Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 5:54 pm

    IBBs have slowly declined since the 70's (1975: 0.9% of all ABs, 10% of all walks to 2010: .65% of all ABs, 7.7% of all walks). People eventually realized how dumb it was to walk a weak hitter to get to an even weaker hitter-if you get Flynn and the inning is now over, the pitcher has to leadoff the next inning (OBP of the leadoff hitter-not the Leadoff Hitter necessarily-is the #1 determinant of how many runs you will score in an inning). Tho Ordonez shows that some managers still like to do it anyway.

34. Neil L. Says:
    May 6th, 2011 at 8:29 pm

    @33
    Welcome back, John DF. So statistics have finally penetrated managerial strategy. It's better to have a pitcher lead off an inning than the #1 hitter in the lineup.

    What are the AL IBB numbers over the 1975-2010 time frame? Has the IBB really fallen out of favor with AL managers, excluding pitchers being on deck?

35. Stu Baron Says:
    May 7th, 2011 at 1:39 am

    @33 John DiFool: Despite his lack of power, Ordonez was a good enough hitter to drive in as many as 60 runs (1999), a season in which he received 12 IBBs.

    @TheIronHorse: Sorry you lost that Bomback autograph. There goes your retirement, lol!

36. Doug Says:
    May 7th, 2011 at 3:35 am

    @32 and Bill Bergen

    Cheese was almost right.

    Other than Bergen's 1909 season, only Willie Miranda with Baltimore in 1957 had a season of 300+ AB and <= 3 XBH.

    Miranda's slash that year was .194 / .249 / .204. He had a career slash of .221 / .282 / .271 in 8 seasons of at least 65 games, including 4 seasons over 100 games, and two seasons as the O's everyday shortstop with over 500 PAs.

37. Jimbo Says:
    May 7th, 2011 at 1:22 pm

    Interesting that with those 64 IBB's, Rey Ordonez still only managed a pitiful .289 OBP. Batting 8th and receiving those 64 IBB's helped his OBP, his OPS, his WAR, etc.

    So his real career OBP would be .271 if he batted anywhere else in the order.

38. Jimbo Says:
    May 7th, 2011 at 1:37 pm

    And wow at Gary Templeton's 2nd year in the bigs. He stole 28 bases and was caught 24 times. Must've imagined in his head he was a good basestealer.

39. Sean Says:
    May 7th, 2011 at 8:23 pm

    Figured Vlad HAD TO be on this list as he is perhaps the toughest guy to waste a pitch against...

40. John Autin Says:
    May 8th, 2011 at 12:17 am

    Rey Ordonez driving in 60 runs in 1999 says very little about Rey -- even those of us who rooted for him have to admit that he was a poor hitter -- but it says quite a lot about the lineup of the '99 Mets, who led the NL with a .363 OBP in spite of Rey's .319 mark.

    In particular, the '99 Mets got an astounding .377 OBP from their #7 hitters, 49 points above the league average. (The #7 spot was filled by a melange of Benny Agbayani, Roger Cedeno and Todd Pratt.) In spite of that, the Mets' production from the #8 hole was mediocre -- 6th in the league in RBI, and next-to-last in runs scored.

41. John Autin Says:
    May 8th, 2011 at 12:19 am

    @38, Jimbo -- Nice spotting. I don't think very many hitters in the live-ball era have had more CS than BB in a full season.

42. John Autin Says:
    May 8th, 2011 at 12:26 am

    Following on Jimbo's observation that Garry Templeton had 24 CS in 1977, to go with 28 SB and just 15 walks:

    From 1923-2010, there were only 4 qualifying seasons with CS > BB.
    -- Templeton was the first to do that in 55 years.
    -- Damaso Garcia was next in 1980, 13 CS and 12 BB (with 13 SB).
    -- But the undisputed champion of this "feat" is none other than Juan Pierre's manager, Ozzie Guillen. Ozzie did it twice, in 1989 (17 CS, 15 BB, 36 SB) and 1991 (15 CS, 11 BB, 21 SB).

    BTW, Coco Crisp is currently on pace to join this select club, with 3 CS and 2 SB. But what are the odds ... that he stays healthy enough to qualify for the batting title?

43. Jeff Wise Says:
    May 10th, 2011 at 6:04 pm

    I'll take Ichiro any day for my team despite the hacking and occasional strikeout. He is valuable beyond belief. I personally like him in the lead off position. Someday though I'd like to see him in the number three spot.