While Ronald Acuña Jr. made headlines with an incredible 73 steals in 2023, becoming the first player since Jose Reyes in 2007 to reach that mark, there was another player who achieved a much less celebrated act on the...
While Ronald Acuña Jr. made headlines with an incredible 73 steals in 2023, becoming the first player since Jose Reyes in 2007 to reach that mark, there was another player who achieved a much less celebrated act on the field more times than anyone since 1997. His name is Ty France and he plays first base for the Seattle Mariners. His forte is getting hit by pitches.
Ty France is a modern-day Coach Ernie Pantuso of Cheers fame, whose specialty was getting beaned. In the fictional TV world of Cheers, Coach led the league in hit by pitches two times. For a younger crowd, Ty France is a modern-day Howie from The Benchwarmers.
Like Coach Pantuso, except in real life, Ty France has led the league in getting hit by pitches twice. He was hit a league-leading 27 times in 2021 and 34 times in 2023. Those 34 HBP last year were the most in the big leagues since Craig Biggio was also hit 34 times back in 1997. It was also the third-highest total in MLB since the beginning of the Integration Era in 1947. The only two hitters to get beaned more often than France and Biggio since then were the King of the HBP, Ron Hunt, who was hit 50(!) times in 1971, and Beefy Don Baylor who was hit 35 times in 1986.
Hunt’s 50-HBP season in 1971 is a massive outlier when it comes to the gap between the record holder and the next-closest player in a particular statistic. As this article shows, his record 50 HBP in a season is 13 standard deviations above average for HBP in a season since 1901. Statistically, the 43 percent gap between Hunt and Baylor is greater than the gap between Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak and Pete Rose’s 44-game hitting streak.
Hunt had a technique for getting hit. “First I would blouse the uniform — this big, wool uniform, I would make sure it was nice and loose,” Hunt said. “Then I’d choke way up on the bat, and stand right on top of the plate. That way, I could still reach the outside pitch. That was the Gil Hodges philosophy on hitting: The two inches on the outside corner were the pitcher’s, the rest was his. I thought, ‘If I can take away those two inches, and he’s not perfect, I can put the ball in play and get some hits. And if he comes inside, I can get on base that way, too.’”
Hunt mastered the technique of crowding the plate with his left arm near the strike zone, then turning away to look like he was trying to avoid the pitch while at the same time leaving his arm, shoulder, or back exposed to take the plunking and a free pass to first base. And he did it without the modern elbow pads that many players wear.
Ty France hasn’t been as prolific as Hunt, but he’s been the best in the business at getting beaned since he became a regular for the Mariners in 2021. In addition to leading the league twice in the last three seasons, his total of 82 HBP is 10 more than the next player on the list, Mark Canha (72 HBP), and 24 more than the player after Canha, Anthony Rizzo (58 HBP).
In 2023, France was hit by a 92-mph sinker from one of the best pitchers in baseball, Shohei Ohtani, and by a lesser-known pitcher named Jake Bird on an 85-mph slider. He was hit by right-handed pitchers on balls that were just slightly up and in and by lefties on pitches that were a bit further from the plate. He was even hit on a 77-mph batting practice fastball thrown by position player Matt Duffy.
At bat, France stands close to the plate, with his back foot not far from the corner of the batter’s box closest to the catcher and umpire. His padded-up elbow hangs over the white line of the inside part of the box and often takes the brunt of the incoming pitch as France makes little effort to get out of the way.
Getting beaned is not new for Ty France. In the minor leagues from 2016-2018, he was hit 28, 27, and 27 times. Even back in college as a San Diego State Aztec, France was hit 14, 14, and 20 times in about half as many plate appearances each season as he’s had in his major league seasons.
The benefit to getting beaned has been a significant boost to France’s on-base percentage. He’s consistently had an OBP about 30 points higher than he would have if he had not been hit by any pitches at all. A more realistic comparison would be if France was hit at a league average rate, his .348 OBP over the last three seasons, which ranks 46th among 226 qualifying hitters, would be .327 and rank 110th. All that pain has a purpose. It adds value to the team.
France also happens to play in an era in which hit by pitches are at their peak. The 2023 season tied with the 2021 season for the most HBP ever, at 2,112 (shoutout to Rush’s Geddy Lee, an avid baseball fan and collector). The 2020 season had a higher rate of HBP/600 PA than 2021 or 2023, as shown below, but that was the shortened 2020 season so the raw number of HBP wasn’t as great.
The graph below shows the increase in HBP rate since 1947. That year, there were an average of 2.3 HBP per 600 plate appearances. In 2023, that rate was three times as high, at 6.9 HBP/600 PA. Eight of the top 11 career HBP leaders are identified on the graph. The other three players in the top 11 are Hughie Jennings (287 HBP), Tommy Tucker (272 HBP), and Dan McGann (230 HBP), who all played parts of their careers in the late 1800s, when baseball was quite a bit different.
After making the jump from the New York Cubans of the Negro National League II, Minnie Miñoso became a full-time player in the American League in 1951. He led the AL in HBP 10 times in the next 11 years. In 1956, Frank Robinson came up with the Cincinnati Reds and led the NL in HBP in his rookie year. He would repeat that feat five more times, then lead the AL in 1969, for a total of 7 times leading the league in HBP. A contemporary of Robinson was the aforementioned Ron Hunt, the man who was hit 50 times in 1971, which occurred during a stretch in which he led the NL in HBP for seven consecutive seasons.
Just as Ron Hunt was winding down his career, Don Baylor arrived. He first led his league in getting beaned in 1973 and did it for a final time in 1987. Altogether, he was the top human pincushion in his league eight times, including four years in a row from 1984 to 1987. Craig Biggio broke into the show in Baylor’s final season, 1988, but didn’t top the HBP leaderboard until 1995. He led his league five times, including three times in a row in the mid-1990s, and is the modern leader in taking one for the team. Jason Kendall only led the league once, which is surprising considering he was hit 254 times in his career.
In more recent years, Chase Utley led the league in HBP three straight years from 2007 to 2009, and some of those HBPs caused a ruckus. Anthony Rizzo led the league three times in five years from 2015 to 2019, which did not include the time he swung on and missed a pitch that hit him in the hip. And that leads us back to the 2020s Baron of Beanings, Ty France.
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