TRIVIA 2020

The three 300-game winners I guessed were all wrong.

I was a surprise!

the letter "I"

i was a surprise, it's a me, mario!

I love the gap between #1 and #2 for the Ys.

trying to think of who would be #2 there...chris young? it would help if i could think of a single non-Young Y pitcher.

YES

That's amazing...I probably would have guessed Yastrzemski.

i got 12 of those. very proud of getting "I"!

one to ponder:

what was the last team that had more triples than home runs in a full season?

had to be pre-deadball...
maybe the Cobb/Crawford/Heilmann(? not sure if all three played together) Tigers?

post-deadball! i was kinda shocked

it's post-expansion, even

like post-most-recent-expansion?! i might have guessed the 80's at some point. i know there was one year where Rollins and Reyes both had a shitload of 3b, but i don't see either of those teams having fewer HRs. just trying to think of modern teams that were known for speed and not-much power... Royals from about7 years ago comes to mind...

this is what i'm doing now instead of sleeping

ok, post...1977 expansion

KM's question, so I'm going to guess the '85 Cardinals.

ah 80's! that's a good guess. put it up on the board!

Close, but not quite: 59 triples, 87 home runs.

They had more wins (101) than HR, that might be unusual.

sorry for trivia overload, but i just learned the SFG almost moved to toronto! while reading up on h ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Major_League_Baseball_expansion :

On January 9, 1976, the National Exhibition Company, owners of the San Francisco Giants, established an agreement in principle to sell the franchise to a consortium owned by Labatt Brewing Company, Vulcan Assets, and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce for C$13,250,000.[11] The Giants had failed to repay a US$500,000 loan from Major League Baseball, and had experienced declining revenues since the relocation of the Kansas City Athletics to Oakland in 1968.[11] Of the sale price, US$5,250,000 was to be placed in escrow to "meet certain possible obligations with respect to the transaction", especially the lease of Candlestick Park, which would expire in 1994.[11]

The new owners of the Giants, led by Don McDougall, would move the team to Toronto pending approval from the other eleven National League teams, which would be sought on January 14 at the Winter Meetings of General Managers in Phoenix. The team would be known as the Toronto Giants[11] and would begin play during the 1976 Major League Baseball season. The deal was scuttled by a Superior Court of California, which issued an injunction blocking the sale on February 11, 1976; the injunction was requested by the city of San Francisco on January 10.[13] The National Exhibition Company eventually accepted a purchase proposal from Bob Lurie in a deal brokered by George Moscone, the Mayor of San Francisco.[13]

The American League provided an opportunity for a Toronto franchise, and two groups bid for the rights to franchise ownership in the city.[10] Ultimately, an ownership group named Metro Baseball Ltd. consisting of Labatt Brewing Company, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and Imperial Trust won the bid for a franchise fee of C$7,000,000.[7][14][15][12]

xpost

clemenza, your instincts are good regarding the cardinals, as i learned about this Triples > HR season while watching this 1991 game tonight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uie2bTBErw8

but no, it's not the cardinals. the 1991 cardinals team did come close to achieving the feat, however, with 53 Triples and 68 Home Runs

i'm going to be very sad when i run out of random old baseball games on youtube to watch

answer to the triples > HR question:

1979 astros

I was sure it was the '85 or '87 Cards, and if not them, one of those late 70's or early 80's Royals teams? I wasn't close to thinking of the right answer, but having seen it then of course it makes perfect sense.

shows how much has changed, i guess. 85/87 cards were too early for me to have but the fuzziest memories of, but i remember the (also extremely weak) '91 cardinals so well, watching every single game i could. now, it's kind of unfathomable for a team to have more triples than HRs.

just checking for 2021, the highest ratio of triples to homeruns was...

overall for baseball (2021), there were 671 triples and 5,944 HRs, for a 0.113 ratio.

the pirates came in highest (or worse), with 35 triples vs 124 HRs (.282). ARI was next highest, with 31/144/.215.
on the other side, the blue jays had only 13 triples vs 262 HRs, putting them at 0.050.

Checked a few early HOF'ers (Cobb, Speaker, Sam Crawford) and, as expected, they all had more career triples than HR--many more. I suppose that, on a timeline of when they played, Ruth was the first HOF'er with the reverse.

i know it's impossible, but i wish there was crystal clear, HD footage of one game of 1890s-era baseball. the spitball, drinking and smoking, the murder of the home plate umpire, everything

Rod Carew has to be the last HOF'er with more triples than HR (119-92). Gwynn, Boggs, and even Ichiro all had more HR.

Gwynn and Boggs weren't know for speed tho. Thinking to the "hall of very good", no one comes to mind for me. i checked Lofton and he was also HR>3b

tim raines
113 triples, 170 HRs

oh wait, I KNOW

THE WIZARD

69 triples, 28 HRs (and every single one of those the best moment of the day)

Great! Should have thought of him. He'll surely be the last, unless there's some sea-change. My first guest, by the way, was only half-a-century off: Paul Waner, who retired in '45. Then I found Nellie Fox, then Carew.

"He'll surely be the last"

see, i doubt that! i think of billy hamilton, especially - someone who would be so valuable, considering his speed and defense, that he could be HOF worthy - if ONLY HE COULD HIT AT ALL! but i can easily imagine someone like him coming along that is an above-average contact hitter with zero power and just flies around the bases

however, it should be noted that i'm always rooting for this kind of player to exist, even among minor league prospects i follow. i think it's the most identifiable kind of player to me

or relatable, i meant

juan pierre: 94 triples, 18 homers

Brett Butler 131:54

Willie Wilson: 147:41

but hall of famers, no

though i guess butler and wilson came a lot closer than i thought!

I don’t think either got many votes.

That's it--there'll be lots of players who do it, but I just don't see anyone who'll be HOF-bound. If you don't hit at least a few homers today--10+ a season, say--you have to do a whole bunch else well to keep a job: hit for a high average, get on base a lot, not strike out, steal bases, play a key defensive position well. To end up in the Hall, you'd have to do them exceptionally well.

Having said that, Ichiro came very close: 96 triples, 117 HR. If his career hadn't partly been spent in the PED era, maybe those numbers would be reversed.

with ichiro, there's also the 1992 (?! - amazing to imagine him playing pro in 1992, at 18) to 2000 stats, where he was hitting 15-25 HRs a year while usually putting up around 5 triples or so per year.

also one sort of gets the sense that ichiro *could* have hit more homers if he'd wanted to -- he just didn't bother

i mean, not really, but still

They always said the same thing about Carew and Boggs, too (don't remember specifically hearing it about Gwynn). Carew had a couple of years where he hit 14, Boggs had his big year with 24 (a huge HR year across both leagues, it should be pointed out), and Gwynn got up to 16 and 17 late in his career (same caveat: outset of the PED era). Who knows?

I’m trying to think of what active players have succeeded the best with a 3b>hr ratio. Jarred Dyson is the only guy that comes to mind, but I’m sure there’s a better example.

Posted those two questions in a FB group, and someone responded with this piece:

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29222915/tim-kurkjian-baseball-fix-hard-believe-history-triple

In 1943, Stan Musial had 20 triples and 18 strikeouts.

By the way: I was looking at the '79 Astros, and they didn't have a single player hit 10 or more HR. Has that been done since? They had a winning record, too. And two players who were at the opposite ends of player evaluation in the earliest Abstracts: Jose Cruz (sabermetric hero) and Enos Cabell (sabermetric villain). And, except for walks--a big "except," I know--their '79 batting lines were virtually the same.