Why Ian Kinsler Rocks

Triples are hard to get. Watching Prince Fielder get a triple in the all-star game was shocking and hilarious. That’s because players that get triples are really fast, not huge like Prince. Sam Crawford has the career record of number of triples with 309, and also has 367 steals. However, Rickey Henderson, the career leader in steals with 1406, only has 66 triples. Times have changed. The last people to hit 20 or more triples in a season were Curtis Granderson, when he had 23 triples in 2007, and Jimmy Rollins, who also hit 20 triples in 2007. If you weed out players that played in the dead ball era, there are very little who hit nothing but triples. 

There’s a reason why triples started to fade after the dead ball era. Triples are cool, but how about inside-the-park home runs? Those are awesome. The ball has to either land funny or an outfielder totally misplays it for it to be a real inside-the-park home run without any errors on the play. Triples became home runs because players started hitting for much more power after 1920 (you can even call it the “Babe Ruth” era). Still, the top five inside-the-park home run hitters are Jesse Burkett, Sam Crawford, Tommy Leach, Ty Cobb, and Honus Wagner. All of them played in the dead ball era, except for Cobb, who played in both live and dead. Jesse Burkett had an absurd 55 inside the park home runs. 

According to Wikipedia, of the 154,483 home runs hit from 1951-2000, 975 (about one in every 158) were inside the park. That’s actually a much bigger statistic than I thought it would be. This year, there have been much more than 158 homers (Chris Davis and Miguel Cabrera combine for 87 already), and there has only been two inside the park home runs. 

That’s why Ian Kinsler rocks. Because he can hit an inside the park home run, as he showed yesterday. So does Angel Pagan, who had an inside-the-park home run to win the game in 10 innings for the Giants. To be fair, if you watch Kinsler’s home run, the ball gets stuck and Dayan Viciedo has to fish it out under the seats, but he did not call for a dead ball, thus the play kept going. 

I don’t think anyone will break Jesse Burkett’s record (which I’ll talk about again later, and how baseball has changed so much over the years), but these past few years have had their moments of inside the park home runs. Last year, Norichika Aoki of the Brewers hit his first MLB home run as an inside the park homer. On the same day, Alex Presley of the Pirates also hit an inside-the-park home run. Coincidence? Yeah. Jhonny Peralta of the Indians hit a three-run inside-the-park homer in 2010 when Tigers outfielder Ryan Raburn crashed through the bullpen fence trying to catch the ball. It took Peralta 16.74 seconds to round the bases, which is the slowest of any inside-the-park home run. It’s as though he just trotted the bases! 

Speak of the devil, Prince Fielder actually has had TWO inside-the park home runs. When he was a Brewer in 2007, Fielder hit a popup to center when outfielder Lew Ford lost the ball after it struck a speaker on top of the Metrodome. He also had a regular inside-the-park homer at Miller Park against the Blue Jays. He became the 3^rd heaviest player to hit an inside-the-park home run.

If you ever get the chance to see an inside the park home run, remember it, because it’ll probably be the only one you’ll ever see. I’ve actually seen one, when Sammy Sosa hit an inside-the-park homer at Wrigley. 

Another reason why Ian Kinsler rules? He allowed me to write a blog post about inside-the-park home runs. Email me at statsbuddy42@gmail.com for any questions/comments/concerns.

-Evan Boyd