One of the less well-noted happenings prior to the 2012 season was a change in one of the career pitching leaderboards. With the retirement of Tim Wakefield, there was a new active leader in career wild pitches, one Allan James Burnett.

A.J.’s ascension to the top rung was well-deserved, coming on the heels of 3 seasons with the spectacular aggregate total of 58 wild pitches. To put that number in perspective, at least five pitchers, at the time they became active leaders in this category, had compiled career wild pitch totals not exceeding A.J.’s three-year mark. For the curious, those players were Freddie Fitzsimmons (1935, 1942), Bill Hallahan (1935), Bump Hadley (1939), Johnny Allen (1942), and Warren Spahn (1959).

After the jump, a look at where A.J. fits into the pantheon of the game’s wildest hurlers.

A.J. currently stands at 135 wild pitches for his career, reaching the century mark with his first wild pitch of the 2011 season. Burnett wasn’t the fastest to 100 wild pitches – Matt Clement holds that honor, the only pitcher to do so in under 1400 innings pitched. Since 1901, here are the career wild pitch leaders, by IP threshold.

Here are the only pitchers to average better than 1 wild pitch per 100 batters faced over a career (min. 3000 IP).

During the 2012 season, A.J. also passed the century mark in hit batsmen, becoming just the 16th player with career marks of 100 or more wild pitches and hit batsmen.

It’s really not a bad club to be in – 7 HOFers, one who should be a can’t miss selection, and 4 or 5 others just on the outside looking in. I’m showing A.J. at the top of this list not because he is the newest member, but because of his innings pitched total, over 700 fewer (3+ seasons worth by today’s standards) than the next lowest total. A.J. also ranks lowest in ERA+, although there he’s running neck and neck with Wakefield, Charlie Hough and Frank Tanana.

Burnett is also lowest (actually, tied for lowest) of this group in another category – number of qualifying seasons with fewer than 10 of both WP and HBP.

Burnett, Cone and Wakefield might well be said to be the wildest of the wild – only once compiling a season remotely suggestive of a “tame” campaign.

Finally, are hit batsmen an “artifact” of wildness? Or, does compiling high HBP totals imply more purpose and intentionality? The answer probably depends on the pitcher. However, one way to approach this question might be to look at the pitchers showing the most extreme variation between HBP and WP.

Here are pitchers since 1901 with the greatest imbalance between career HBP and WP, with a minimum 50 of each. First, the largest imbalance in favor of wild patches.

So, that’s it – just 10 pitchers since 1901 with twice as many WP as HBP. There seem to be two types of pitchers represented – the truly wild as represented by Sudden Sam, and the purposely wild (if that isn’t an oxymoron) pitchers with outstanding SO/BB ratios (Smoltz, Carlton, Mathewson) who, if they were going to miss, would miss away instead of in.

Now the pitchers with the greatest imbalance in favor of hit batsmen.

Even fewer pitchers on this side of the imbalance ledger. And, with Pedro, Dave Stieb and Eddie Plank among them, my assumption has to be that, with this group, purpose more than accident was the principal factor contributing to this imbalance.

Therefore, should we infer that the least intentional pitchers in terms of hit batsmen might be the ones with the least imbalance between HBP and WP – pitchers who were as likely to miss on one side of the plate as the other? Let’s see.

These are the pitchers since 1901 with careers of 50+ WP and HBP, and with HBP = WP +/- 5% .

Interesting group. A number of softer tossers with less impressive SO/BB ratios and some fireballers (Gooden and Hubbell, particularly) who could intimidate just with their stuff, even without frequent resort to the purpose pitch. Or, perhaps like Bob Gibson (who at 102/108 just missed making this list), they just exhibited greater control in throwing their purpose pitches.

Or, maybe you’ve inferred something different. Let us know.