Ode to the triple
Texas Ranger rookie Wyatt Langford hit his first home run in the major leagues in late April. To make it all-the-more exciting, it was an inside-the-park homer — the fifth time a Ranger rookie went inside the park to record a first career home run.
Wait, wasn’t the title of this article about an ode to the triple? The most exciting play in baseball? It must be acknowledged that an inside the park home run is pretty darned exciting too. When Ty Cobb won the AL Home Run crown in 1909, he hit nine homers. All were inside-the-park. Dead-ball baseball was different from the game that’s played today. Inside-the-park home runs occur about once every 130 games. Chances are excellent that if you go to an MLB game you won’t see one. But triples, they are another story. While more common than inside the park home runs, triples have been slowly evaporating over the past 30 years.
What has become of the triple?
When you think about your favorite team’s players in history, invariably there’s a player you’ll recall that had great speed, and probably hit at the top of the lineup. That player in the 1980’s might have been Willie McGee for the Cardinals or Willie Wilson of the Royals, who led the American League in triples five times. The images of McGee and Wilson tearing around the bases, helmet flying off and sliding into third amidst a big cloud of dust is indelible, and made baseball fans, smile. Because it’s fun to watch a triple!
In 2007 and 2008, when Curtis Granderson was with the Tigers, he hit 23 and 13 triples in consecutive seasons to lead the American League both years. No player has reached 20 triples since. Met’s Jose Reyes slashed 19 triples in 2008. Watching Reyes run out a triple was a joy that Met fans won’t ever forget.
The all-time record for most triples in a single season is held by Owen Wilson. Not the Owen Wilson who was your first thought. It was Pirate’s star Owen Wilson who had 36 triples in 1912. The holders of the next four slots for the single season record for triples all played before the modern era, which began in 1901. Hall of Famer and Pirate Kiki Cuyler had 26 triples in 1925, the year in which the Bucs won their second World Series.
Flash forward to 2022 when the Met’s Brandon Nimmo and Dodger’s Gavin Lux tied for the NL lead in triples wit only seven. That was two fewer than AL leader then-Guardian Amed Rosario who had nine. Last season, Diamondback’s rookie Corbin Carroll led the NL with 10 triples and Royal’s Bobby Witt Jr. led the AL with 11. When it comes to triples, baseball’s youth will be serving them up. Outside of a fielding misplay, slower runners have little chance to hit a triple. Presently, it does not seem that 20 triples for one player in a season is within reach.
In 2023 the D’backs led MLB with 44 triples. That’s an average of a little more than one triple every four games. You need to go all the way back to 1983 which was the last time both leagues combined for more than 1,000 triples in one season. From 1901 until 1932 there were only three seasons with 1,000 triples combined between the leagues. One of those seasons was 1918 which was a pandemic-shortened season. In 2023 the two leagues combined for 712 triples which was an increase 69 triples from the year prior.
Baseball’s evolution into ‘three true outcomes’, is part of the explanation. Better overall outfielders who carry better overall arms are another important factor. While the overall running speed of MLB players is faster than it was because the athletes are better trained and coached, that collective speed is not fast enough to make a huge difference when the outfield throws are overall stronger and more accurate. Baserunners know the players in the outfield very well, those you can run on, and those you better not run on.
Triples history
Sam Miller of ESPN did a nice job looking back at the history of triples in a 2019 article:
“Where it fits in historical trends: The long-term trend — since the 1920s — for triples has been down, but the dips have been slow and irregular. In the 1920s, the average team tripled about once every two games; in the 1930s and 1940s, it dropped to once every three; in the 1950s through the early 1980s, it was about once every four; and then over the next three decades, it was once every five. Over the past two decades, triples have occasionally dropped further still, and the three lowest triple rates in history came in 2013 (0.16 per game), 2017 (0.16 again) and 2018 (0.17). If this season holds at 0.14 triples per game, it would be the lowest rate in history, about 150 triples fewer leaguewide than were hit last year.
And, indeed, this goes counter to another recent trend, of more playing time going to young position players. (Triples peak in a player’s early 20s.)”
Risking going for third base
Sabermetrics has shown that the risk of advancing from second to third on a contested play (or in exchange for an out) isn’t worth it by run-expectancy models; and fear of injuries has made runners more cautious, more station-to-station.
Going for the extra base is not as attractive when the batters that follow can park one in the stands.
Excerpted from Rob Mains excellent article in Baseball Prospectus from 2018
The trends are:
· Batters are less willing to try to stretch a double to a triple.
· Runners are less willing to try to steal third.
· Runners are less willing to try to advance from first-to-third on a single.
Rob Mains went on and got deep in the weeds, but hang in there:
“Run expectancy tables consider every base-out state (bases empty, runner on first, first and second, etc., with zero, one, or two outs) and count the average number of runs scored in that situation. This isn’t statistical hocus-pocus; it’s a snapshot of what occurred during a season. In 2017, there were 34,180 occasions when a batter came to the plate with no outs and a runner on first. The batter’s team scored 30,574 runs in those innings. So, the average team in 2017 with a runner on first and one out could expect to score 30,574 / 34,180 = 0.8945 runs.
Say you’re a runner at first base with nobody out when a single is hit. We can use run expectancies to see that, in 2017, if the runner stops at second, his team could expect to score 1.4810 runs. If he makes it to third, the run expectancy rises to 1.7333, an increase of 0.2523 runs. However, if he’s thrown out and the batter holds, there’s a runner on first with one out and the run expectancy drops to 0.5407, a decrease of 0.9403 runs. So, the runner had better be 0.9403 / (0.9403 + 0.2523) = 79 percent sure that he’ll make it, or he’s going to cost his team runs.
Similarly, a runner on second with one out represented 0.6899 runs in 2017. If that runner goes to third, either by stealing the base or stretching a double to a triple, the run expectancy is 0.9325 runs, an increase of 0.2426 runs. If he’s thrown out, though, his team has nobody on and two outs, and the run expectancy drops to 0.1094, a decline of 0.5805 runs. So, stealing third, or trying to stretch a double to a triple, with one out had better work 0.5805 / (0.5805 + 0.2426) = 71 percent of the time, or the team is leaving runs at the table.”
There is a time to chance getting thrown out at third base
There’s a baseball adage that you should never be thrown out at third base for the first or third out. The idea is to be almost certain when deciding to try for third base when there are zero or two outs. Fans know that a runner getting to third with one out allows for a sacrifice fly, which cannot occur when there are two outs.
Another aspect of why there are fewer triples is smaller ballparks. Stadiums such as the Polo Grounds, and the long-gone Braves field in Boston, which had a centerfield wall 550 feet from home plate, are extinct. Colorado, which is more known for home runs than triples, has the largest playing field in MLB. Coors Field, and had an MLB league-leading 231 triples in 2023, a figure matched in Arizona at Chase Field, which is not as well known for triples.
Since it’s unlikely that outfield fences will be moved back, something that would increase the overall number of triples, there’s not much that can be done to increase the most exciting play in baseball. That’s a shame since we all could use a smile, more than once in a while.
Here’s what I wrote about the Mets this past week:
https://mlbreport.com/2024/05/mets-schedule-has-done-them-no-favors/
https://mlbreport.com/2024/05/in-defense-of-the-mets-defense/
https://mlbreport.com/2024/05/mets-dont-have-many-good-things-to-talk-about/
About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and Substack.com.
