Intentional base on balls

An intentional base on balls (denoted by IBB), often called an intentional walk, is a walk that was issued with no intent of ever allowing a hit.

Since most managers call for the intentional walk by holding up four fingers, representing four intentional balls, some announcers and journalists call the intentional walk the four-finger salute.

When a batter receives an intentional base on balls, he is entitled to walk to first base. Receiving an intentional base on balls does not count as an official at bat for a batter but does count as a plate appearance, and a base on balls. A ball that is thrown intentionally for the purpose of giving up an intentional base on balls is called an intentional ball. A base on balls counts as an intentional base on balls if and only if the final pitch thrown in the at bat is an intentional ball, even if not all the pitches are intentional balls.

When pitching an intentional ball, the pitcher will generally throw to an area several feet outside the plate, where it would be physically impossible for the batter to hit the ball. The batter can choose to swing at an intentional ball, although this rarely occurs since it is rarely to the batter's advantage. A swing at an intentional ball resulting in a hit occurred in baseball during a June 22, 2006 game between the Florida Marlins and the Baltimore Orioles. The Marlins' Miguel Cabrera hit an intentional ball thrown by Todd Williams during the 10th inning resulting in a run scored for the Marlins. Outside the professional leagues however, such as in high school or college baseball, the manager may simply request to the plate umpire to let the batter go to first instead of having the pitcher waste four outside pitches.

The purpose of an intentional walk is to bypass a good hitter in order to face a batter that the defensive team feels they have a better chance at getting out, or to set up a double play ball by putting a runner on first base. The danger of issuing an intentional walk is that an extra runner is now on base for the following hitter. In many cases, there is an additional danger that the batter who the opposing team chooses to face will feel slighted and work harder to get a hit.

In the history of Major League Baseball, five players have been issued intentional walks with the bases loaded (thus giving the batting team an automatic run). This is only done in the rarest of cases, typically when the pitching team is leading by four runs or less late in the game and a particularly feared hitter is at the plate. The five players given such passes are Abner Dalrymple (1881), Nap Lajoie (1901), Mel Ott (1929), Bill Nicholson (1944), and Barry Bonds (1998).

Some fast runners will attempt to steal a base on an intentional ball. This rarely happens because an intentional ball has almost the same effect as a pitchout, as the catcher is already on his feet and has a better opportunity to catch the runner attempting the steal. In addition, a runner on first base would not attempt a steal because an intentional walk will move him to second anyway. In any case, since the battery is not expecting the runners to steal during an intentional walk and thus, the pitcher throws the ball at a slower velocity than a pitchout, the runner can take advantage and successfully steal the base. Roberto Alomar has done this in his younger days with the Toronto Blue Jays, as it was the time when he was his fastest, albeit very infrequently due to the heightened chance of being caught.

Bonds holds almost every record in existence for intentional walks with four in a nine-inning game (2004), 120 in a season (2004) and 645 (through the 2006 season) in his career (more than the next two players on the all-time list, Hank Aaron and Willie McCovey, combined). Bonds, a prolific home run hitter, was a common target for the intentional walk. Nevertheless, many times the decision to walk Bonds came back to bite opposing managers, as the San Francisco Giants still had the National League's second-best offense in 2004, scoring 820 runs. In the first month of the 2004 baseball season, Bonds drew 43 walks, 22 of them intentional. He broke his previous record of 68 intentional walks, set in 2002, on July 10, 2004 in his last appearance before the All-Star break.

External links

• Free Pass—Players who were intentionally walked with bases loaded, from Baseball Digest, May 2000