The biggest news on Tuesday was not the Astros hitting five home runs in a row, but the fan sitting in the Green Monster seats who caught two of those home runs.
The biggest news is that Daniel Vogelbach hit a triple.
The Pittsburgh Pirates designated hitter is not the fastest player in major league history. The man with the giant legs and huge feet and hands was probably the man known as "Ernie Lombardi", who had a lack of speed. His knees were too low to the ground, and his center of gravity was four feet behind him, so that he was never endowed with adequate speed. As he got older, he became the slowest player to ever play in a major league baseball game.
In his first full season in the majors, Lombardi hit nine triples.
The fastest active player is Vogelbach. Statcast has made it possible to measure these things. 98% of players have recorded a higher top speed this season, because the top sprint speed of Vogelbach is in the third percentile. He has been slightly faster than Albert Pujols and other catchers. There is a person named Giancarlo Stanton. I am not sure what is going on with him. He does not run anymore. I am not sure if he chooses not to run or if he is incapable of doing so.
Whether or not he is zooming around the bases, he looks like a professional athlete. The kid who played right guard on your high school football team, or an undersized sumo wrestler, or the truck driver who has had a few too many greasy meals, is what Vogelbach is. He is listed at 6 feet and 270 pounds. His legs are too short for his torso. His arms are like a salmon swimming upstream, if he had arms. He tries to run fast.
When he came up to the plate for the Pirates in the fourth, he had gone 1,023 career at-bats without hitting a triple, the most of any active major leaguer. That was not the longest current stretch without a triple. Since his last triple early in the season, Stanton has gone 1, 347 at-bats. Pujols has gone over 3000 at-bats since his last triple in 2014, while Pujols and Cabrera have not hit a triple in two years.
I watched the video on that one. Pujols hit a grounder over the first baseman's head, and the ball went into the corner as Texas Rangers right fielder Michael Choice couldn't get to it. The highlight shows Mike Trout smiling after he scored on the play and couldn't believe Pujols had hit a triple.
The highlight of the day was the fly ball to deep left field that Ian Happ missed, but it was a routine fly ball against the Chicago Cubs starter.
Stand up TRIPLE for noted speed demon Dan Vogelbach 😮💨pic.twitter.com/cZ3eZH0h95
— Diamond Digest (@Diamond_Digest) May 18, 2022
The man didn't need to slide.
The triple is close to extinction. In 2020 there will be just 0.13 triples per game, matching the lowest rate ever. It's possible that the state of baseball is going to change in 2022. There were more triples back in 1980 than there are today. Last season, Shohei Ohtani, David Peralta and Bryan Reynolds led the majors with eight triples, the lowest major-league-leading total since 1872, when Charlie Gould of the Boston Red Stockings paced the National Association with eight three-baggers.
There are three ways a triple is hit.
1. A fast or moderately fast batter hits a deep fly ball over an outfielders head in one of the parks with bigger power alleys. It makes sense that the park with the biggest triple factor over the last three seasons is Comerica Park. More than 16 teams hit triples last season because of a remarkable 23 triples hit by Curtis Granderson in 2007, his home park. The odd configurations can create some wild ricochets.
2. The ball goes into a corner and either sticks there, with the fielder playing well off the line, or goes into the corner and rebound away from the fielder. It is not always necessary to have some speed on the part of the batter.
3. The fielder makes a mistake with the ball. Maybe it is a collision in the center of the field. He might lose it in the sun. Maybe he missed a jump at the wall. This is what happened with the triple. It was a catchable play because of the expected batting average of.480. Since the ball bounced so far away from Happ, he made it into third with relative ease.
The line drive in the gap or a hard-hit grounder that goes all the way to the wall are the only triples you don't see anymore. There are three reasons for this.
1. More hitters with the ability to hit the ball over the fence means outfielders playing deeper to prevent fly balls from going over their heads. More hitters are trying to hit the ball in the air to hit home runs.
2. The new parks have less outfield space than their predecessors, especially the old multipurpose stadiums like Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati or Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, where the power alleys were deeper. It means less ground for outfielders to cover and less chance that a ball in the gap will go all the way to the wall.
3. There is no artificial turf. A ball could hit the turf and move quickly to the fence.
There are other reasons to think about. Maybe there are fewer Willie Wilson/Lance Johnson type players in the game who can hit double-digit figures in triples. Johnson averaged 14 triples per season from 1991 to 1996 but only hit 25 home runs. That type of player is not present anymore. Many of the fast players, like Ronald Acuna Jr. or Ohtani, are also big-time hitters. Teams don't want players making outs on the bases so they take fewer risks on the bases, which may be why players don't hustle like they used to.
The best highlight of the night was not the triple by Vogelbach. This happened after the triple.
So you decided to run on Seiya Suzuki: pic.twitter.com/9vBKIPWDQj
— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) May 18, 2022
That is a highlight. You can replay it even though it is hard to watch. Everything about it is great, from the mad dash to the non-collision collision to the great throw to the mask exchange.
By the way, we need to mention that he is having a pretty good season at the plate, hitting.252/.336/.486 with six home runs and a 137 OPS+. He was a regular in the leadoff spot for most of April, which was certainly one of the goofier things we will see this season. He has been the best hitter for the Pirates, who have been shut out twice and no-hit in the other game. He could end up being the Pirates All-Star Game representative, despite the fact that Jose Quintana and David Bednar have pitched well.
If he makes it to the All-Star game, he will be making his second appearance, as he represented the SeattleMariners in the All-Star game back in 2019. Since Seattle, he has moved from Toronto to Milwaukee and now to the Pirates, becoming a fan favorite wherever he goes. Let's hope he doesn't hit another 1,000 at-bats before his next triple.
And you are up, Victor Caratini. The catcher has 955 at-bats without a three-bagger.