April 26, 2012

Tater Trot Tracker

Trot Times for April 25

by Larry Granillo

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After watching so many home runs over the last 2+ years, I've come to have a number of favorite players to watch on their tater trots: Scott Rolen, Billy Butler, Adrian Beltre, David Ortiz, and plenty more. It's always nice, then, when a number of them all hit home runs on the same night, like many did on Wednesday. Top that off with some of the big flies that we saw last night, it was a good day for home runs.

Let's get to the trots!

Home Run of the Day: Yoenis Cespedes, Oakland Athletics - 21.3 seconds [video]
Paul Konerko hit the 400th home run of his career in this game (eliciting quite the reaction from Hawk Harrelson), but the milestone home run was in a losing effort. It was in a losing effort because of this home run by Cespedes. The two run bomb in the bottom of the 14th inning tied the game up for the A's, who won it a few batters later on a walkoff basehit. Through Wednesday's game, Cespedes is batting .269/.367/.567.

Slowest Trot: Ramon Hernandez, Colorado Rockies - 25.83 seconds [video]
I don't know what you have to do to be slower than two separate Billy Butler trots, but that's where Ramon Hernandez finds himself today. Also hitting two home runs was Pittsburgh's Pedro Alvarez, who spread his pair across two games. Alvarez is now hitting .156/.174/.444.

Quickest Trot: Orlando Hudson, San Diego Padres - 17.3 seconds [video]
Hudson always sprints around the bases after his home runs. At least five of his 2011 trots were faster than 18.22 seconds. Considering how small and wiry he is, though, I tend to forget about him when I think of quick trotters. Scott Rolen, who is nearly three years older and at least 50 pounds heavier than Hudson, always springs to mind right away. I guess I don't expect third basemen to be fast. With his first home run of the year, it was nice to see Rolen keep up his quick ways, coming around in 18.04 seconds.

All of Today's Trots

Ramon Hernandez......25.83    Wilson Betemit.......22.04
Billy Butler #1......24.42    Mike Aviles..........21.98
Mike Napoli..........24.32    Ryan Braun...........21.84
Chris Davis..........23.96    David Freese.........21.38*
Paul Konerko.........23.8     Yoenis Cespedes......21.3
Adrian Beltre........23.53    Corey Hart...........20.97
Billy Butler #2......23.45    Eric Hosmer..........20.63
Omar Infante.........23.3     Travis Ishikawa......20.28
Garrett Jones........23.04    Raul Ibanez..........20.28
Vernon Wells.........23       Pedro Alvarez (G. 1).20.24
Pedro Alvarez (G. 2).22.81    Brennan Boesch.......19.87
Mitch Moreland.......22.75    Angel Pagan..........19.56
Bryan LaHair.........22.68    David Wright.........19.39
Alex Gordon..........22.48    Ben Zobrist..........18.67
Alex Liddi...........22.37*   Scott Rolen..........18.04
Matt Kemp............22.09    Orlando Hudson.......17.3

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.