Tony La Russa: you hit one of ours, we hit two of yours. Really? No.

During the recent unpleasantness between the Yankees and Rays, Yankee announcer Micheal Kay again stated something attributed to Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa: you hit one of ours, we hit two of yours.

Tony La Russa April 1, 2007 by shgmom56, Barbara Moore
via Wikimedia Commons

It sounds ominous and unlikely to be correct.  So, I checked for the years that La Russa managed the St. Louis Cardinals in the National Conference, which still has that quaint old rule requiring the pitchers to bat.  The numbers are below but the average is that Cardinal pitchers hit opposing batters about 6.2% more than Cardinal batters were hit.  I didn't expect it to be two to one but 6.2% is pretty slim.  This is a very simple look and does not consider percent of plate appearances nor the critical relationship between Bases on Balls (BB) and Hit By Pitch (HBP), which I call the meanness factor.  I looked at the meanness factor several years ago and concluded:
1. pitchers do not throw at each other
2. there are reputations that are backwards; for instance, Early Wynn was nice, not mean, and probably would not knock down his mother
3. the three meanest post World War II pitchers are Pedro Martinez, Don Drysdale and Jim Bunning.
4. there is probably a bias against sidearm pitchers.
5. there is probably a bias against right handed pitchers; recent evidence suggests that pitchers tend to hit batters of the same handedness more often; see previous post.

Meanness Factor: how to determine if HBP is intentional.  Saturday, August 20, 2011

St. Louis Cardinals:

year	Bat	Pit	P-B	year	(P-B)/B
1996	44	35	-9	1996	-20.45%
1997	42	59	17	1997	40.48%
1998	42	54	12	1998	28.57%
1999	51	63	12	1999	23.53%
2000	84	62	-22	2000	-26.19%
2001	65	72	7	2001	10.77%
2002	67	60	-7	2002	-10.45%
2003	73	65	-8	2003	-10.96%
2004	51	67	16	2004	31.37%
2005	62	60	-2	2005	-3.23%
2006	61	80	19	2006	31.15%
2007	54	73	19	2007	35.19%
2008	42	51	9	2008	21.43%
2009	61	53	-8	2009	-13.11%
2010	50	48	-2	2010	-4.00%
2011	44	46	2	2011	4.55%
tot	893	948	55		6.16%