The record of 36 of course was set over a century ago, and no one has really come close in decades- what specifically now makes triples so less common? Thanks all!
-Ballparks used to have much deeper dimensions to center field than they do now.
-Triples were more common in Astroturf parks than natural grass. The ball moves faster on Astroturf, so it would get past the outfielders and roll to the outfield wall more often.
-Way more bulked-up power hitters and fewer speedsters in the game today than in past eras.
Chief Wilson played his home games in Pittsburgh’s spacious Forbes Field when he set the single season record. It was 462 feet to the center field fence. There were some strangely shaped ballparks back in the day. Check out the Polo Grounds.. It was only 258 feet down the line, but check out center field and the power alleys.
Here’s a site that has interactive diagrams of every MLB ballpark, past and present, and the alterations through their lifetimes.
Most likely geometry and risk aversion/different strategy. Is a triple really that much more valuable than a double in today’s baseball?
The turf in general is in better shape than it was a century ago. A ball is much less likely to hit the outfield grass and take a strange bounce away from an outfielder. Same thing with outfield fences.
Unless you already have two outs, a triple doesn’t have a lot more strategic value than a double (aside from a wild patch.) Why risk getting thrown out trying to stretch an extra base.
While I don’t necessarily seeing it being as big an effect as changing the size of ballparks, there’s a different approach to conditioning. Once upon a time you practiced the sport itself and did “12 ounce curls” at the bar. Now players actually spend time working out. That should have some small effect on the ability of outfielders to throw accurately and far. Better arms on outfielders makes the triple riskier.
you can score from 3rd on a sac fly so that is an advantage a triple has over a double.
Plus a lot of outfielders have stronger throwing arms now. Jason Heywood, Yeonis Cespides, Bryce Harper all have better-than-average throwing arms (a lot of times called “a cannon”), among others, which makes taking that third base a bigger gamble.
Wild pitch, passed ball, bunt, slow ground ball or a ground ball that’s knocked down but not fielded cleanly.
Even if true, I don’t believe this makes a difference. I do not at all believe that throws are more accurate now, and that any throws that are faster or further do not make a significant difference in comparison to the reduced time it takes for outfielders to get to the ball because of smaller fields and fewer blind corners.
Infield error. :smack:
does any stadium have a rule for a ground rule triple? Ground rule doubles happen when a ball bounces over the outfield fence as one example.
bigger parks with odd dimensions and crappy playing surfaces, I can see. I seriously doubt Chief Bender and Sam Crawford could out run Vince Coleman, Rickey Henderson, et. al. so player speed not a factor. No one hit more the 21 in the entire Astroturf era. Bigger players means stronger arms, but not automatically more accurate, plus yearly totals for outfield assist leaders were much higher 80-100 years ago then now. The power increase WOULD have I thought led to the 80 year old record of doubles of 66 falling by now, but no one has gotten within six or seven of that one strangely to me- I mean, one ball off the wall or down the line or up an alley every 2.5 games for a power hitting player doesn’t seem that unlikely .
100% shape and size of stadiums. 483 to dead center of the Polo Grounds. Ballparks are now built for home runs not triples
Nope, not 100%; there are other things going on. We can see that by isolating on parks whose dimensions haven’t changed. For example, Wrigley Field hasn’t changed at all since 1938. Here are the average number of triples per game (Cubs and visitors combined) by decade at Wrigley Field since then:
1940-49: 0.536
1950-59: 0.630
1960-69: 0.523
1970-79: 0.514
1980-89: 0.521
1990-99: 0.438
2000-09: 0.320
2010-19: 0.384
That’s a pretty dramatic decline. The numbers at Fenway Park tell a similar story, down from about 45 triples per season in the 1940’s to about 30 today.
Others have suggested a number of factors–faster outfielders, outfielders with better arms, less aggressive baserunners, or maybe just different batting stances and swings that are geared toward hitting home runs instead of low line drives. I don’t know the relative importance of those factors, nor how they could be quantified or separated. But there’s something more than just ballpark dimensions.
95.67%
There isn’t one right now.
This is a fascinating question but really I think there’s two main factors:
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Outfield defense is better.
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Runners are less aggressive in going to third.
There is very little doubt that the quality of fielding in the major leagues is far better than it used to be. You still have the odd terrible fielder but there used to be more of them.
On top of that, MLB runners just don’t attempt as many high-risk extra bases as they used to.
It’s a funny thing, really, because MLB players are absolutely just as fast as they have ever been. Even in the 1950s, when baseball was not a baserunners’ game and there were very few stolen bases there were far more triples than there are today. In 1956 there were more triples than there were stolen bases, something I think is just totally impossible now.
Loach, while ballpark dimensions may affect it, I think Freddy has conclusively proven it’s not just ballparks, and not even MOSTLY ballparks. If it were, his observations about Wrigley and Fenway would clearly not be true; at a glance, it also appear to be true of Dodger Stadium, which goes back far enough to be relevant.
Ballparks definitely have some effect; if one looks at triples totals for teams in parks with unusually deep outfield fence points, they are noticeably higher in triples, on average, than teams with short and standard fence distances. But it can’t be the whole story.
The doubles record is 67, of course.
That’s actually an interesting related point too. There have been 53 seasons in which a player hit at least 52 doubles, and jut more than half were before the expansion era. Almost all the ones since then were in the 1990s and 2000s hitting boom; only three men (Jose Ramirez, Miguel Cabrera and of all people Johnathan Lucroy) have done it in the last ten years, and between the expansion of 1961 and the start of the steroid era, which I will arbitrarily start in 1993, only TWO men did it; Hal McRae and Don Mattingly. In the steroid era it was being done by such luminaries as Jeff Cirillo, Mark Grudzielanek and Brian Roberts, but guys like Frank Robinson never did it. I have no problem with Mark Grudzielanek but he wasn’t exavctly a super elite hitter. (ETA: Frank did hit 51 one year; I cut if off at 52 just because that was the number that got me to more than 50 men.)
Doubles are very, very strongly associated with the level of offense. When hitting goes up, doubles go up, and when it goes down, doubles go down. However, when you adjust for that, doubles are up just a little now; if you compare the last few years with seasons in the past with essentially equivalent levels of run scoring, doubles are higher now. It varies a lot in the past though. Doubles were very, very low in the 1950s.
As today’s game as a historically normal, if not slightly higher, number of doubles, but historically low number of triples, I’m even more convinced it’s a matter of defense and baserunning decisions.
Based on the quoted stats, triples declined by 30% in the same ballpark from 1940-1989 to 1990-2019 and according to Major League Batting Year-by-Year Averages | Baseball-Reference.com, they declined 30% league wide over the same years.