Leo Jiménez’s New Book Explores the Essence of Baseball: ‘The Beaning of Life’

A ballplayer who grabs a bat and steps up to the plate aims to hit. The point of the sport is to go around the bases, and the most efficient way to do that is to put wood on the ball and hope for the best. But it’s far from the only way to go around the bases. Sometimes you hit the ball, and sometimes the ball hits you.

I’ve long been fascinated by players who use their own bodies as a means of advancement, dating back to when I, as a child, read a George Vecsey feature on the single-season hit-by-pitch leader in an old anthology of baseball writing.

“Ron Hunt, Loner,” painted a broadly ambivalent portrait of a second baseman with modest physical gifts. But Hunt made two All-Star teams and retired with the same career OBP as Shohei Ohtani, despite playing in the most pitcher-friendly era of the past 100 years.

Those who are able to systematize the hit-by-pitch can transform their careers. Brandon Guyer, one of my favorite random players of the 2010s, was a master of freezing on a back-foot breaking ball and became a must-start platoon player on a pennant-winning team.

These are the 10 hitters for whom the hit-by-pitch makes up the highest percentage of their total times on base (hits plus walks plus HBPs). The league-average OBP this year is .312, a mark half of these 10 players meet or exceed on their overall stats. Three others are within a few points of average.

In 1971, Hunt set the all-time single-season record by getting plunked 50 times — FIFTY TIMES — in a single season. This season, 22.4% of Jiménez’s times on base have been due to his getting hit. In Hunt’s record season, he got hit in 19.8% of his times on base.

Jiménez sets up fairly close to the plate, but he’s not standing right on the inside line of the batter’s box. Compare that to the position of Luis García Jr., who has more plate appearances this season than any other hitter who hasn’t been hit by a pitch.

His batting stance puts his elbow in the perfect position to intercept a slightly wayward two-seamer from a right-handed pitcher. Of the 13 pitches that have hit Jiménez this season, 12 have impacted him in the hands or arms.

Jiménez is daring the umps to make a rare and frequently unpopular call, and they keep not doing it. If nobody’s going to make that call, why would Jiménez stop chucking his elbow in front of every sinker that misses the inside corner? It’s made him an above-average offensive player as a .226 hitter with a 6.9% walk rate.

The most striking way I can express the extremity of Jiménez’s pitch-seeking is by expressing his HBPs as a percentage of the total pitches he’s seen that have been off the plate and inside.