The big news yesterday was that the Padres agreed to a trade that would send Jake Peavy to the White Sox, but needed Peavy's approval to allow the deal to go through. But, after leaving the fans in suspense all day, he chose to remain in San Diego - where he is 3 hit batters away from breaking the Padres' franchise record in that category. Peavy has hit 44 batters for the Padres, and sits in 4th place in the their team record book, behind Brian Lawrence, who plunked 45 batters between 2001 and 2005, and Joey Hamilton and Eric Show, who both hit 46 batters pitching for the Padres.

Over the offseason, the Padres trade away Khalil Greene when he was just 4 HBPs away from breaking the team record for getting plunked, so the San Diego front office really seems to be protecting their record book from any of their current players, for some reason.

Peavy is scheduled to pitch against the Cubs today, so maybe if he hits three batters he'll be more willing to accept a trade, with the record already in his pocket.

We now return to our regularly scheduled HBPs of Note, for May 21, 2009:

Kevin Kouzmanoff got plunked for the Padres, bringing his career total to 29, and since that means he's only 6 behind Gene Tenace's Padres record, they'll probably trade him sometime soon. Tim Lincecum was responsible for Kouzmanoff's plunking, and has now hit Kouzmanoff twice, even though he's hit everyone else in the league only 8 times.

David Eckstein also got plunked for the Padres yesterday, bringing his career total to 128. He's tied for 37th on the all time list with Jeff Bagwell, and stays just ahead of Jose Guillen, who also got plunked yesterday. Guillen has 127 career HBPs now, which puts him in 39th place all time, but he has that spot all to himself. Guillen's 127th HBP was also the 65th plunk ever thrown by Carl Pavano.

Possibly more important than his standing on the all time list, Eckstein's plunk occured with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th inning, down by 1 run with 2 outs. His HBP drove in the game tying run, and led to Scott Hairston's game winning single. That's the most clutch late game HBP since Jose Molina's 12th inning game winning walk-off HBP on July 19, 2008.