While getting hit by a pitch does not occur frequently, a new study, “Getting Hit by Pitch in Professional Baseball: Analysis of Injury Patterns, Risk Factors, Concussions, and Days Missed for Batters,” which was published online on May 16, 2018 in The American Journal of Sports Medicine, has found that getting hit by a pitch is a significant source of time out of play.
The researchers involved in this study wanted to investigate the effect of hit by pitch (HBP) injuries in terms of time out of play injury patterns resulting in the greatest time out of play. They collected data from the Major League Baseball (MLB) Health and Injury Tracking System on all injuries to batters hit by pitch during the 2011 through 2015 MLB and Minor League Baseball seasons.
According to the data, there were 2,920 HBP injuries and they resulted in 24,624 days missed over the 5 seasons. MLB HBP injuries occurred at a rate of 1 per 2,554 plate appearances (1 per 9.780 pitches thrown).
In addition, 3.1% of MLB injuries and 1.2% of Minor League Baseball injuries required surgical treatment (p = .005). Hits to the head/face (Odds Ratio, 28.7) or to distal upper extremity (Odds Ratio, 6.4) were likely to lead to injury.
The most common areas of the body for an injury to occur when hit by a pitch were hand/fingers (n = 638, 21.8%), head/face (n = 497, 17.0%) and elbow (n = 440, 15.7%) and concussions (146, 5.0%).
They also found that protective gear can make a difference. In their study, players with an unprotected elbow missed 1.7 more days than those who wore an elbow protector (p = .554) when they were injured after being hit by a pitch.
The researchers wrote that HBP injuries represent a significant amount of lost play time and that after contusion, concussions were the most common injury diagnosis.
Every 10 pitches thrown around the leagues a player gets hit by a pitch . The cost to the player and team is to great . The more strategic players get hit more often .
It’s time for a rule change , if 2 bases were given to batters HBP it would reduce Player injures and Team cost .
I agree with Mr. Lawrence 100%. The rule changes in both football and baseball intended to make it less violent, RE: football – targeting the head, slamming the QB, etc. and in baseball – spiking the fielder at 2nd base, have improved the game notabley. One of the last bastions of inappropriate violence in competition is throwing at a batter, who is more or less defenseless in the batters box when attempting to avoid a ball traveling at upwards of 90MPH. 2 bases as a penalty would definitely dissuade pitchers from this tactic way more than 1 base, which is basically a walk with potential injury. Batting averages would no doubt increase, which I’m certain pitchers would hate, but fans would no doubt like. Similarly to collisions at home plate being outlawed, so should so called “brushback” pitches and intentional HBPs be done away with.
The source of this image is Minda Haas Kuhlmann. The “source” is Wikimedia Commons only in that it was uploaded to that website after being downloaded from her Flickr account. Do better.
Thank you very much for the note. We did see it on Wikimedia Commons, did NOT know it had been downloaded from Minda Haas Kuhlman’s Flickr account some years ago. We will replace it right away. Again, appreciate your letting us know. Robin Young, Publisher