Slugging for Triples

[chadeast]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

It is very surprising to me that Rickey Henderson, a great speedster with pretty decent power (close to 300 HR), had only 66 triples.

Rickey's surprising lack of career triples is discussed here. TLDR: righty pull hitters dont hit many triples, home park effects, slow out of the box with that crazy crouching stance.

https://tht.fangraphs.com/endangered...hree-base-hit/

He was also quoted saying that 3B was his favorite bag to steal, since he could get the biggest lead. So wanting to be at 2nd so that he could take 3rd was a real factor to some degree.

[cammb]

I don't have a card but Vada Pinson is up there with 256,127

[tonyo]

If this thread wasn't dedicated to triples, his name couldn't be uttered with the aforementioned all -time greats...............
and...........
not great lifetime stats,
but..........

I went to alot of Braves games in the early 90's and always walked into that stadium thinking "I hope Deion Sanders hits a triple today"

among the most exciting plays in baseball IMO.

p.s. I guess he didn't care about stealing 3rd; in '92 he lead the league with 14 triples, but had only 6 doubles.

[molenick]

I used the Bill James power/speed number calculation on most of the people listed in this thread and some others. As a reminder, the calculation is (2*SB*HR)/(SB+HR). Apparently (as I just learned today) this is called the harmonic mean.

The idea is to reward players who did both things well (rather than just use an average which disproportionally rewards someone who did just one thing well). For example, Harmon Killebrew's power/speed number is 36.8 (based on 19 SBs and 573 HRs), which better reflects his combination of power and speed than the average of his SBs and HRs (which is 296). If both numbers are the same, then the psn is the same as the average (if you hit 100 HRs and stole 100 bases your psn is 100).

Anyway, I used that formula but substituted 3B for SB. These are the top players I did....I may have missed a worthy candidate, I just picked players that were mentioned in the thread plus some others I could think of (basically I looked at the leaders list for 3Bs and HRs). Anyone already mentioned in the thread not listed below ranks lower than these players.

Some interesting players that were not yet mentioned are Foxx, DiMaggio, and Brett.

Please note that there may be manual errors introduced from typing numbers into a spreadsheet.

Player 3B HR PSN
Musial 177 475 257.9
Gehrig 163 493 245.0
Mays 140 660 231.0
Ruth 136 714 228.5
Hornsby 169 301 216.5
Goslin 173 248 203.8
Foxx 125 534 202.6
Simmons 149 307 200.6
Clemente 166 240 196.3
J. DiMaggio 131 361 192.2
Brett 137 317 191.3
Bottomley 151 219 178.8
Aaron 98 755 173.5
Connor 233 138 173.3
Pinson 127 256 169.8
Cobb 295 117 167.5
Heilmann 151 183 165.5
Gehringer 146 184 162.8
Slaughter 148 169 157.8
Rollins 115 231 153.6
Speaker 222 117 153.2
Wheat 172 132 149.4
Granderson 95 344 148.9
S. Crawford 309 97 147.7
Rose 135 160 146.4
Medwick 113 205 145.7
Brock 141 149 144.9
Wagner 252 101 144.2
Stovey 176 122 144.1

[molenick]

I was curious if the newly included Negro League stats affected my list and it looks like Turkey Stearnes (112 3B, 186 HR, 139.8 psn) was the best at combining 3Bs and HRs.

[Collectorsince62]

There is a statue of Stan Musial outside of Busch Stadium. At the dedication ceremony in 1968, Stan said his knee hurt that day. Then with that infectious smile and laugh he told the crowd it was from hitting so many triples!

I miss him.

[FrankWakefield]

Bob Costas at Stan's funeral...

https://youtu.be/NnYTfEG5bCk

if your a Cardinals fan, or a Mantle fan, you'll shed a tear.

[Casey2296]

Originally Posted by FrankWakefield

Bob Costas at Stan's funeral...

https://youtu.be/NnYTfEG5bCk

if your a Cardinals fan, or a Mantle fan, you'll shed a tear.

Thanks for the reminder of what a great human being Stan Musial was, we should all aspire to act a little more like him everyday.

[Leon]

I just watched the whole thing. Time well spent. Thanks for posting it.

Originally Posted by FrankWakefield

Bob Costas at Stan's funeral...

https://youtu.be/NnYTfEG5bCk

if your a Cardinals fan, or a Mantle fan, you'll shed a tear.