On July 31st, 1897, John Grimes, who appeared in only three games during his one-year career with the St. Louis Brown Stockings, established a major league record by hitting six batters in a nine-inning game. The post-1900 record is four hit batsmen in nine innings, a dubious mark shared by many pitchers.

According to Baseball Reference, the current active players that have been hit by a pitch the most times in their career are:

• Anthony Rizzo, NYY, 219 times
• Starling Marte, NYM, 156 times
• Mark Canha, DET, 135 times
• Justin Turner, TOR, 128 times
• Jose Abreu, HOU, 125 times
• Charlie Blackmon, COL, 109 times
• Freddie Freeman, LAD, 107 times
• Ty France, SEA, 103 times
• Kolten Wong, BAL, 103 times
• Willson Contreras, STL, 100 times
• Mike Trout, LAA, 100 times
• Kris Bryant, COL, 99 times

The first thing that jumps out to me when I look at this list is that three of the players came up in the Cubs system and were key players on the 2016 Cubs World Series team: Bryant, Contreras, and Rizzo. This can’t be an accident.

The other thing that jumps out to me is that the two current career leaders, Rizzo and Marte, both play in the Big Apple. Maybe we should start calling New York City the Big Ouch!

Charlie Morton, who currently pitches for the Atlanta Braves, is the active pitcher who has hit the most batters in his career. As of today, he has hit 180 batters over his 17 year career. He has already hit 12 this year.

So what happens when our immovable force (Morton) meets one of our immovable objects (Rizzo, Marte, etc)? More than likely, it will end with someone saying, “ouch!”