April 28, 2012

Tater Trot Tracker

Trot Times for April 27

by Larry Granillo

Printer-friendly

It's the weekend. Let's not waste any time and get right to the trots!

Home Run of the Day: Edwin Encarnacion, Toronto Blue Jays - 23.43 seconds [video]
There is no Hit Tracker Online information for Friday's home runs yet, so I don't know exactly how far this blast from Encarnacion went, but it doesn't really matter. Just watch that video. If you can hit a home run in the Rogers Centre that somehow disturbs someone's dinner in the centerfield restaurants, it's impressive.

In the same game, Seattle's Michael Saunders hit two home runs, with his second being a go-ahead grand slam in the top of the 10th inning. Overall, it wasn't a bad game to watch.

In Colorado, New York's Scott Hairston hit for the cycle in an 18-9 loss. The home run was the second rung on his four-step ladder to coincidental immortality.

Slowest Trot: David Ortiz, Boston Red Sox - 25.73 seconds [video]
Even when Big Papi seems to be running fast on his home run trots - like he did with this one - he still manages to come up with a slow trot. Saunders' grand slam was the second slowest trot of the day.

Technically, a 24.2 second trot isn't all that slow. For Eric Thames, however, it feels almost Papi-esque. There was a reason for it: on his fast-flying home run, Thames missed first base as he rounded the bag and was forced to run back to the base to touch it. It was still 1.5 seconds faster than Ortiz's trot.

Quickest Trot: Aaron Hill, Arizona Diamondbacks - 18.91 seconds [video]
Of the 33 home runs hit across the league on Friday, Hill's trot was the only one to take less than 20 seconds to complete. I know I've said this before, but that is almost certainly the largest group of trots to have only one reasonably-quick trot. It's almost amazing, actually.

All of Today's Trots

David Ortiz..........25.73    Jay Bruce............21.83
Michael Saunders #2..25.42    David Murphy.........21.8
Billy Butler.........24.78    Andre Ethier.........21.45
Jesus Montero........24.25    Troy Tulowitzki......21.41
Eric Thames..........24.2     Devin Mesoraco.......21.3
Carlos Gonzalez......23.98    Evan Longoria........21.15
Dexter Fowler........23.57    Buster Posey.........20.98
Edwin Encarnacion....23.43    Ty Wigginton.........20.92
Paul Konerko.........23.38    Darnell McDonald.....20.86
Ramon Hernandez......23.33    Trevor Plouffe.......20.77
Adam LaRoche.........22.82    Russell Martin.......20.75
Michael Saunders #1..22.76    Alex Rodriguez.......20.68
Alex Gordon..........22.54    Josh Reddick.........20.49
Scott Hairston.......21.93    Torii Hunter.........20.27
Luke Scott...........21.88    Josh Hamilton........20.12*
Eric Sogard..........21.87    Aaron Hill...........18.91
Angel Pagan..........21.86

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.