May 5, 2011

Tater Trot Tracker

Trot Times for May 4

by Larry Granillo

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I love that summer finally seems to be arriving. It's great to watch baseball games being played in bright sunshine or under cloudless twilight. It makes everything seem right.

Now let's see some equally-beautiful trots.

Home Run of the Day: Carlos Pena, Chicago Cubs - 22.93 seconds [video]
I highlight Carlos Pena's blast here not to point out his struggles thus far into the season, or that this was his second home run in as many games or even that this was a bomb into the rightfield corner. No, I'm making Carlos Pena's shot off of Ted Lilly the Home Run of the Day because I wanted to point out how terrific Lilly's exaggerated windup (something I had never noticed before) looks in these throwback uniforms. It's almost as if he's channeling Christy Mathewson. I love it.

Slowest Trot: Barry Enright, Arizona Diamondbacks - 25.48 seconds [video]
A commenter in yesterday's Tater Trot Tracker post asked me to do a future post all about pitcher's home runs. I will be more than happy to do that, but I'd like to wait until we have a few more home runs from the mound before writing it. In the meantime, I try my hardest to point out any and all pitcher home runs in the post everyday, even if they aren't the fastest, slowest, or greatest home runs of the day. I think I've only missed doing that for one such home run so far this year.

As luck would have it, Arizona starting pitcher Barry Enright hit his first career home run on Wednesday and it happened to be the slowest trot of the night. Not that I'm surprised by that, though. He doesn't look like the quickest guy.

Quickest Trot: Eric Patterson, San Diego Padres - 17.94 seconds [video]
Eric Patterson, however, looks very much like the "quickest guy" and, for the most part, he lives up to it. This is his second home run in two days as well, and, in both cases, he managed the quickest trot of the day. Nice feat.

It should be noted that Marlon Byrd also had a quick trot going, but he got stuck with Carlos Zambrano on the basepaths. Can't do much about your trot when someone as slow as the Big Z is "running" in front of you.

All of Today's Trots

Barry Enright......25.48      Prince Fielder.....21.81
Chris Davis........25.35      Geovany Soto.......21.44*
Ryan Doumit........24.14      Adam Lind..........21.09
Juan Miranda.......23.91      Alex Rios..........20.72
Magglio Ordonez....23.87      Jon Jay............20.6
Nate McLouth.......23.68      Kelly Johnson......20.06
Danny Espinosa.....23.64      Brad Hawpe.........19.74
Mike Stanton.......23.12*     Chris Iannetta.....19.74
Vernon Wells.......23.09      David DeJesus #1...19.69
Carlos Pena........22.93      Raul Ibanez........19.63
Mitch Moreland.....22.59      David DeJesus #2...19.04
Nick Markakis......22.5       Marlon Byrd........18.96
Jeff Francoeur.....21.95      Eric Patterson.....17.94