In 10,876 plate appearances, Craig Biggio was able to take first base 285 times after being hit by a pitch (2.6% of his plate appearances). Hughie Jennings came up just 5,639 times, but was hit a record 287 times (5.1%).
I think of Luis Castillo as a similar type of player, if not quite the same quality, as Biggio (and as Jennings, if I've ever stopped to picture Jennings) -- slight, scrappy, willing to do anything he can to get on base and make things happen. Yet, in 7,471 plate appearances, Castillo was hit just twelve times -- 0.16% of his plate appearances. Biggio was hit over sixteen times as often as Castillo, Jennings nearly thirty-two times as often. It's not that hard to see why if you look at a video; Castillo generally stood straight up and down, and well back in the box, so that he can reach out and slap at even inside pitches. He's also moving all the time in the box, which probably makes him a bit more ready to get out of the way.
Taking one for the team can actually be a highly valuable skill. Biggio is a great player either way, and Jennings is at least a good one, but how about Ron Hunt? His on-base percentage in non-HBP plate appearances was .334; with the HBPs, .368. He had no other skills.
Nonetheless. Who were the best players at avoiding HBPs, or the worst at drawing them? I'm not aware of any site that carries HBP% or something similar, so I've had to piece it together through various Play Index searches, but here's by best shot at a "top" ten at avoiding getting hit, since 1901. It's largely subjective; there are a bunch of guys who batted three to five thousand times and were hit once or twice, but I'm choosing to ignore them because they're not as interesting to me as someone with a much longer career who was almost never hit. Then again, if you lasted three thousand or so PAs and were never hit, that's pretty interesting. If you want to be more objective about it, here's a list of fewest career HBPs with a minimum of 5,000 PA.
So here's my own list:
