April 10, 2012

Tater Trot Tracker

Trot Times for April 9

by Larry Granillo

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The allure of Opening Week is finally gone. While some teams are still celebrating (or awaiting) their home openers, others are already back to midseason form. In Houston, 17,095 paid to see the hometown boys beat the Braves. In Oakland, the stellar Royals/A's matchup only brought out 10,054 paid attendees. One of those is bound to change on Tuesday, as the Astros plan to hold their first throwback game of the year. In honor of their 50th anniversary, the team will be wearing old Houston Colt .45s jerseys, smoking gun and all.

If that doesn't bring folks out to Minute Maid Park, I don't know what will. In the meantime, let's get to the trots!

Home Run of the Day: Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco Giants - 22.54 seconds [video]
For the second time this season, the Cardinals hit three home runs in one inning, lighting up Cincinnati's Homer Bailey in the first inning. That feat might be enough for Home Run of the Day if it wasn't for Pablo Sandoval's entertaining celebration. As Carson Cistulli notes, that's not one or two celebratory gestures for the Panda, but four! Hey, if it works...

Slowest Trot: Bryan LaHair, Chicago Cubs - 25.12 seconds [video]
On a night when the wind was whipping out of Wrigley Field, it really looked like there was going to be a slew of home runs hit between the Brewers and Cubs last night. In the end, though, only three were hit out, one of which was barely caught by the chain-link basket in left field. LaHair's bomb, on the other hand, had no such problems clearing the fence. In fact, the first home of the year for LaHair found its way easily onto Sheffield. Meanwhile, LaHair took slow, small steps as he circled the bases, giving us the slowest trot of the night.

Quickest Trot: Alejandro De Aza, Chicago White Sox - 17.95 seconds [video]
A leadoff home run and a wonderfully quick jaunt around the bases? De Aza's home run almost made it worth listening to Hawk Harrelson's home run call. Almost. (It is the quickest trot of this young season.)

At 18.29 seconds, Boston's Dustin Pedroia wasn't much behind De Aza for the quickest trot. Omar Infante and Darwin Barney had pretty nice trots of their own.

All of Today's Trots

Bryan LaHair......25.12     Matt Wieters......21.67
Rickie Weeks......23.9      Nelson Cruz.......21.55*
Jose Lopez........23.31     Yadier Molina.....21.17
Matt Holliday.....22.93     Austin Kearns.....20.85
Mitch Moreland....22.9      Kirk Nieuwenhuis..20.68
Josh Willingham...22.56     Omar Infante #1...20.44
Pablo Sandoval....22.54     Josh Hamilton.....20.03
Ian Kinsler.......22.42*    Darwin Barney.....19.33
AJ Pierzynski.....22.12     Omar Infante #2...19.21
David Freese......21.99     Dustin Pedroia....18.29
Justin Maxwell....21.8      Alejandro De Aza..17.95
Andruw Jones......21.74

Click here for the ongoing 2012 Tater Trot Tracker Leaderboard. You can also follow @TaterTrotTrkr on Twitter for more up-to-the-minute trot times.