To be a good pitcher they say, you need to keep the hitters off-balance and you can’t let the hitters get comfortable at the plate. If you look at the Twins pitching history, you will see that some of the Twins top pitchers were not afraid to plunk a hitter now and then. I can’t tell you for sure if these pitchers threw at batters on purpose or if they just felt that they owned the plate and they were not afraid to pitch inside, but either way, the pitchers on this list hit their share of batters and a number of these pitchers pitched in the days when they themselves had to step up to the plate to hit. Jim Kaat hit the most batters when he pitched for the Twins, hitting 89 batters (plus 7 more as a Washington Senator before he became a Minnesota Twin) but he also pitched just under 3,000 innings and he averaged a hit batter once every 33.25 innings. Mike Smithson, who certainly was not afraid to pitch inside hit 46 batters in his time with the Twins and he did this in just 816 innings so he hit a batter every 17.74 innings, far and away the most hit batters per innings pitched. Let’s take a look at the Twins top ten.
| Name | Batters hit | Innings | Innings per hit batter | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jim Kaat | 89 | 2,959 | 33.25 |
| 2 | Bert Blyleven | 80 | 2,566 | 32.08 |
| 3 | Brad Radke | 62 | 2,451 | 39.53 |
| 4 | Jim Perry | 50 | 1,883 | 37.66 |
| 5 | Mike Smithson | 46 | 816 | 17.74 |
| 6 | Kyle Lohse | 44 | 908 | 20.64 |
| 7 | Scott Erickson | 42 | 979 | 23.31 |
| 8 | Dave Boswell | 34 | 1,036 | 30.47 |
| 9 | Frank Viola | 29 | 1,772 | 61.10 |
| 10 | Johan Santana | 27 | 1,308 | 48.44 |
Now let’s take a look at the Twins current starters and see how they compare.
| Name | Batters hit | Innings | Innings per hit batter | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Scott Baker | 25 | 915 | 36.60 |
| 2 | Francisco Liriano | 20 | 617 | 30.85 |
| 3 | Nick Blackburn | 17 | 668 | 39.29 |
| 4 | Carl Pavano | 12 | 397 | 33.08 |
| 5 | Brian Duensing | 6 | 289 | 48.17 |