Carlos Quentin’s HBP Zone

This post is going to be short and sweet, but given what transpired last night and David Temple’s plea to Quentin on Tuesday, I got curious about where the pitch locations of Carlos Quentin’s HBPs actually have been. We all know he hangs over the plate, and that he gets hit by a lot of pitches, so I asked Jeff Zimmerman to query out PITCHF/x data and create a plot of where Quentin has been hit since 2008.

During that span, Quentin has been hit by 95 pitches. Here is where those pitches were located.

QuentinHBP

There are four pitches that were plotted against the upper corner of the strike zone, to the point where we wouldn’t have been surprised if they had been called strikes had they not hit Quentin.

This is going to be harder to see from the plot, but there are 25 HBPs represented there that were between -1.0 — the inside corner to an RHB — and -1.5 on the horizontal axis. The labels on the x axis are in feet, so you could otherwise say that Quentin was hit by 25 pitches that were recorded to be no further than six inches off the inner part of the plate.

I asked Zimmerman about the frequency of HBPs in that area. According to Jeff, 0.02% of all pitches thrown by Major League hurlers in the -1.0 to -1.5 range result in a hit by pitch, or 2 HBPs per 10,000 pitches thrown in that area. For Quentin, 0.4% of all piches in that range result in an HBP, or 40 per 10,000 pitches.

Quentin’s rate of being hit by pitches within six inches of the inside corner is 20 times higher than the Major League average. It is, at the minimum, a little hard to have sympathy for the guy.

For the record, last night’s pitch from Greinke was plotted at -1.504, so it is just barely outside of that sample area. It was certainly inside and off the plate, but most batters would not have been hit by that pitch.





Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

215 Comments
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bowie
10 years ago

beautiful and elegant
One would think that a player who is continually hit by pitches (and frequently injured) might think to himself, “Maybe it’s me.”

Devil's Advocate
10 years ago
Reply to  bowie

Turning it around: besides Greinke, none of the many pitchers who have hit CQ have ever been charged at.

tomemos
10 years ago

This is irrelevant, since there’s nothing Greinke could have done or said in that situation to justify Quentin’s action. It’s not like Greinke has some history of being charged, or being perceived as anything other than a nice guy, anyway.

Freakshow
10 years ago
Reply to  tomemos

Huh? Grienke comes off as a grade A douchebag to me.

KDL
10 years ago
Reply to  tomemos

Douchebag and headhunter are different things. If being a douchebag were a reason to charge the mound, someone would charge the mound every time the Phillies were up by less than 3 in the 9th.

Jeremy
10 years ago
Reply to  tomemos

If being a douchebag were a reason to charge the mound, someone would charge the mound every time the Phillies were up by less than 3 in the 9th played.

FTFY.

randplaty
10 years ago
Reply to  tomemos

He has a history of mouthing off. If someone hits you with a pitch and then says “F*** off” to you. What are you going to do?

NATS Fan
10 years ago
Reply to  tomemos

I am a fan of neither team nor either player, but I happened to be watching that game and Greinke all but demanded that Quentin charge him. No player could have not charged in that instance without being considered a huge panzy. Plus, Greinke threw consecutive pitches right at Quentin’s wrist. hit him twice in essentially the same spot, but Quentin was considered to have swung at the first pitch even though he checked his swing. Honestly, I am beyond shocked that Greinke has not been suspended. It was very very deliberate, both the pitch and the baiting to fight, and I rarely feel that way about an HBP. I almost always side with the pitcher. I used to like Greinke but that was a richard move!

Baltar
10 years ago
Reply to  tomemos

NATS, Greinke has been suspended for at least 8 weeks; Quentin, for 8 games.

WhiteSoxFan
10 years ago
Reply to  tomemos

Baltar, Gerinke wasn’t “suspended”. He is on the Disabled List due to a broken collar bone. But when you look at the history between the two guys, it’s been built up tension. He had it coming. Not saying he deserves a broken bone, but you can’t say that a confrontation wasn’t bound to happen.

KDL
10 years ago
Reply to  tomemos

If someone had ridiculously been whining about a perceived wrong I did to them for 4 years and they very publicly started whining about it again, I would probably tell them “Fuck off”. Even if Greinke reacted before Quentin was headed toward him (which wasn’t the case) he would have been totally justified in telling Quentin off.
Finally, I am completely perplexed by the macho types saying “man-up” “take what you deserve”…while never once questioning the manliness of crying about being hit by a baseball.

Devil's Advocate
10 years ago
Reply to  tomemos

The point was: if Quentin is “continually hit by pitches” as the OP stated, yet never charges the mound, what was different this time? Perhaps Greinke should think “Maybe it’s me”?

I am not defending Quentin, he clearly comes off poorly here, just saying that by the OP’s logic, perhaps there is more to the story than we know?

Jim
10 years ago
Reply to  bowie

You never know; he could have intentionally been trying to injure Grienke.

I always had an idea, back in the ’90’s, that I called “the Tyson Rule.” The thinking was that every basketball team should hire Mike Tyson (or someone similar), whose sole purpose on the team would be to go out on the floor and injure the opposing team’s best player, thus keeping him off the court for at least that game (and, hopefully, as long as possible). Obviously, this was unlikely to have been Quentin’s goal in a game in in April, but if, say, a bench player on a playoff team were to charge the mound against another playoff team’s ace or closer during a meaningless game in mid-September with the intention of ending that pitcher’s season, it could create a significant amount of value for his team.

Dave
10 years ago
Reply to  Jim

Grienke was cruising through 5. It’s entirely possible (though not at all likely) that Quentin wasn’t trying to injure Grienke, but WAS trying to get him ejected from the game.

Baltar
10 years ago
Reply to  Dave

Why does Greinke’s name get misspelled almost as often as Samardxyue’s and Saltalmkmxl’s?

Nathan
10 years ago
Reply to  Dave

what about Rzepczynski

Rally
10 years ago
Reply to  Jim

It really helps when that Mike Tyson type can actually play basketball, like Dwyane Wade.

Mtwzzyzx
10 years ago
Reply to  Jim

“You never know; he could have intentionally been trying to injure Grienke.”

I don’t how else you could characterize a guy the size of an NFL linebacker running at you full speed. No, no intent to injure there.

The Ted, Section 437
10 years ago
Reply to  Jim

Sure, it’s just a hypothetical, but at some point you’re really compromising the integrity of baseball.

Ha.

vivaelpujols
10 years ago
Reply to  Jim

HAHAHA this is a great idea.

James
10 years ago
Reply to  bowie

Unless, of course, you feel the guy has thrown at your head multiple times previously.

One would also think that a player who is being charged by someone noticeably larger than him might think to himself, “Maybe I should mitigate the impact.”