Weird Baseball Speed Stats for Mid-July

by user DNL

After reading this post on Baseball Musings, my curiosity was piqued and I did some stat digging. I noticed that the New York Mets have an outside chance at having two 30/30 players, as both David Wright and Carlos Beltran are both on pace to break 35 homers and 30 stolen bases. This would be the only the third time in history two players from the same team made the 30/30 club -- the 1987 New York Mets (Howard Johnson/Darryl Strawberry) and the 1996 Colorado Rockies (Ellis Burks/Dante Bichette).

Add in the fact that the Mets have a guy with little speed but good pop in Carlos Delgado, and the ultimate speedster in Jose Reyes, and even Cliff Floyd is on pace to add about 15 of each.

This lead me to investigate the team's HR and SB production over the course of the season, compared to the other 29 teams. The Mets, as of this writing, are 4th in the Majors in homers (2nd in the DH-free NL) and 1st in SB.

But it gets even weirder. The Cincinnati Reds lead the NL in dingers... and are second in the senior circuit in stolen bases. This may change now that Felipe Lopez is in Washington, but that's neither here nor there. While the Mets have two players with 10+ SB and 20+ HR, the Reds do not have a single player with 10+ SB and 10+ HR. They're doing it differently than the Mets (or were, before the trade).

I also figured that he Mets, with Reyes especially, would be pretty high up there in triples. I was right -- their 25 is good for 5th in the Majors. But the Reds, a team with a few speedsters with doubles power, are ... second to last, with a mere nine.

Huh?

It gets stranger: Leading the bigs in triples is the San Francisco Giants, with 33. But the Giants are second-to-last in stolen bases, with 28. That's right -- the Giants have more triples than bases stolen.

I just don't get it.

Date

Sat 07/15/06, 4:16 am EST

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ASwaffAll-American

1234 days ago

Score 2

The thing about triples is that it has more to do with where you hit it than it has to do with speed. Just about anyone can get to third base, if the ball is hit right. The Giants lead the majors in triples because their ballpark is built for triples. Tall outfield walls with strange angles and a cavernous outfield make it pretty easy to hit triples. Easier than New York's stadium, and much easier than Cincinnatti's.

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DNLLegend

1234 days ago

Score 1

Could be. They have 19 triples (in 44 games) at home, and only 14 on the road (in 46 games). However, opponents have more triples away from Pac Bell (or whatever its called now) than they do at PB -- 15 to 10. I guess part of that is because SF outfielders are more used to the confines and the odd bounces, but still, it shouldn't really be that way.

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ASwaffAll-American

1234 days ago

Score 0

It could be because of the outfielders, but I agree, that probably doesn't explain all of it. Part of it could also be the types of hitters they have. It's possible that a lot of the guys in their lineup don't have the power to hit homeruns in that big ballpark, so maybe alot of long shots turn into triples. The Giants only have 29 of their 87 homeruns on the season at AT&T Ballpark. Their opponents have 35 homeruns against them.

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