The Players With The Highest Fraction Of Intentional Walks

Intentional walks are a funny stat, since so much depends on the context. Some great players don’t draw many, while some lesser players draw quite a few. But who draws the most IBBs as a fraction of their total number of walks?

Intentional walks have only been tracked since 1955, so I only included players who played all or most of their careers after that date. That didn’t affect anyone near the top of the list, though. I also set a minimum of 50 career intentional walks to be eligible for the list.

The list below is ordered by the highest percentage of walks that were intentional (the IBB/BB column). I also list the percentage of PAs that ended in intentional walks (IBB%) and the percentage of non-IBB PAs that ended in walks (UIBB%), for reference.

Wow. Almost half of Manny Sanguillen

‘s career walks were intentional. He perfected the “swing at everything but hit it hard” school of hitting, to which many of the other players on this list belong.

This list is a nice mix of hall of famers very good players, and guys who were all but worthless with the bat. Any list that has Rey Ordonez

between Ichiro Suzuki and Barry Bonds gets an A+ in my book.

You’ll notice that there are basically 3 ways to make this list. First, and hardest to do, is to get an insane number of intentional walks to offset a strong walk rate. This really only applies to Bonds and Albert Pujols

, as they are the only ones with above-average walk rates. Bonds and Pujols have the highest intentional walk rates since 1955; they’re the only 2 players to be intentionally passed more than 3% of the time*.

* Ryan Howard

is 3rd with 132 intentional walks out of 4409 PAs, just a hair under 3%.

The second way to make the list is to be a dangerous hitter with a free-swinging attitude. This covers some Hall of Famers like Ernie Banks

, Tony Gwynn , and Roberto Clemente , but also some lesser players like Manny Sanguillen, Garry Templeton , and Warren Cromartie . Even the latter group were still valuable hitters, despite their low walk rates. Another common factor for these guys is that they tended to play for weak offensive teams; without strong hitters behind them, they were of course more likely to be intentionally passed.

The final group is players who really couldn’t hit, but who got a lot of intentional walks because they usually hit 8th, in front of a pitcher. That includes Ordoñez, Dave Rader

, and Dale Berra (Yogi Berra ‘s less-talented son). Perversely, these players’ lack of hitting ability actually results in more intentional walks, since it means they almost always hit 8th. If they were a bit better, and thus hit higher in the order, they’d probably almost never be IBBed.

For fun, I also compiled the players with the lowest proportions of intentional walks:

Rickey Henderson

, as with so many other things, stands head and shoulders above other players. Fun fact: Rickey had fewer intentional walks than Rey Ordoñez, but 2,002 more unintentional  walks. That’s… a lot.

I should note that Ted Williams

would have made this list if I had allowed partial careers; however, he only played his last 6 seasons in the IBB-tracked era, so I don’t think that is very representative of his career as a whole. He actually had one season of more than 30 IBBs; if he had a few more of those earlier in his career (before IBBs were recorded), there’s little chance that he would qualify for this list.

The common threads here are that these players generally hit at the top of the lineup, drew a lot of walks, and hit in front of big-time sluggers.

I should note that, while hitting at the top of the order certainly does reduce the chances of being intentionally walked, about half of these players hit all over the lineup (Gene Tenace

, Dwight Evans , and Toby Harrah , to name a few). In addition, hitting at the top doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t get a lot of intentional walks. Just look at Ichiro, who is the premier leadoff man of the 2000′s, yet whose intentional passes make up over a third of his total walks.

What I love about both these lists is that they prove that there’s more than one way to be successful as a hitter. Some of the greatest hitters of all time were free swingers who rarely walked when given the chance to hit, yet other phenomenal hitters were very patient, yet almost never got to 1st base without working for it.