Let’s Get Paulo Orlando 21 Triples

The highest career triple rates in baseball history, minimum 1000 plate appearances, with one exception:

• Paulo Orlando, 17.2%
• Tom Long, 3.0%
• Joe Jackson, 3.0%
• Sam Crawford, 2.9%
• Buck Freeman, 2.7%

Orlando, obviously, doesn’t qualify, being well short of 1000 career trips to the plate. But let’s just pretend he got all the way up to 1000, and over that span he never hit another triple. He’d still have a higher rate than Darin Erstad, and Jeff Francoeur, and whichever one of the Alex Gonzalezes this is, and Rickey Henderson. Across baseball, triples have been in decline. Orlando is trying to reverse the trend by himself.

Until a short while ago, you’d probably never heard of him. He’s a 29-year-old rookie who joined affiliated baseball in 2006. That tells you plenty about his career path, and upon Orlando’s initial promotion, by far the neatest fun fact was that he became the third-ever Brazilian major-leaguer. Now there’s a neater fun fact, a fact all Orlando’s own: he’s the first player anyone can find whose first three big-league hits were triples. And since then, he’s hit two more triples.

He isn’t just the current major-league leader, among players. He’s also tied for the major-league lead, among teams. Orlando has all five of the Royals’ triples. Four other teams have five triples, but none have more than that, and most have fewer. Two teams have yet to hit a single triple. Orlando hasn’t hit a ball out of the park. From a post by Jeffrey Flanagan:

“The first time the guy who scouted me for the White Sox saw me [in Brazil] he said to me, ‘All you do is hit triples. You never hit home runs,'” Orlando said, smiling.

See? Scouting is easy! Orlando was scouted as a triples machine. He’s blossomed into something of a triples machine. No matter how much longer this goes on, Orlando’s already made history. Few 29-year-old rookies can say that, but now that we know Orlando’s already cemented his place, how much more might’ve been possible to do? It’s time for this article to get stupid.

A triple is a unique sort of result. A triple is basically just a special double, a double with a little something extra to give it a kick. A triple is in part up to the hitter, but it’s also in part about the ballpark, and it’s in part about the defense. We can review Orlando’s five triples, in order:

Triple No. 1

Triple No. 2

Triple No. 3

Triple No. 4

Triple No. 5

It’s taken as a given that Orlando runs well. Long strides. Impressive to watch. But triples tend to need a little help. Three of the triples above took place in Kansas City, where the park has a high triples factor due to the distant power alleys. And the two hit in Anaheim required slight defensive misplays. One line drive just went right over Mike Trout’s head, as he didn’t retreat enough. And then you also see Matt Joyce getting too close to the left-field wall, probably due to unfamiliarity with the park. Good contact + speed + something = triple. “Something” can sometimes be about the defenders.

So as we sit here today, Orlando has five triples out of 21 balls in play. Already historic, but those triples needed a little help. So let’s imagine there were a little more help. Orlando has five triples, and 21 total potential triples. What would it have taken for Orlando to record 21 triples, or, a triple on every ball in play? Below, the 16 non-triples, with commentary, and a score on the Feasibility Index, rating how realistic a scenario would be from 1 – 10, with 10 being extremely realistic. I am pulling these scores off the top of my head, but, have no fear, I’m a subject-matter expert.

Non-Triple No. 1

What it would take for a triple: Right off the bat, you see the challenge of the assignment. How do you turn a soft line drive to second base into a triple, and not just a series of errors? I’m going to go with the following: Micah Johnson gets a slow start. Bad first step. Maybe he initially reads the ball up the middle. To recover, Johnson tries to dive to his left to make the catch, full-extension, but instead of catching the ball, he knocks it away into foul territory, between first base and right field. Orlando never stops running. Because of the effort required, Johnson doesn’t get an error. You know how dumb these things are. And Orlando ends up with credit.

Feasibility Index: 2

Non-Triple No. 2

What it would take for a triple: Well, we’ve already established in our hypothetical that Micah Johnson is kind of a clumsy idiot, so then this gets a little easier given the prior. Johnson breaks in the right direction but the baseball goes right through him, without even touching his body or glove. It’s a slow roller, but the right fielder doesn’t expect it to get through, so he’s jogging in, and then when the ball does reach the grass, the right fielder sprints forward and overruns the ball out of shock. Two misplays but nothing that counts as a textbook error. Orlando never stops, because while Paulo Orlando is a professional baseball player, his dream is to be a professional runner.

Feasibility Index: 1

Non-Triple No. 3

What it would take for a triple: Tremors!

Feasibility Index: 1, hopefully

Non-Triple No. 4

What it would take for a triple: This one’s easy. The contact’s there. The location is there, more or less. What bit Orlando here was Joyce’s quick read and first step. So, you just have to eliminate that. Give Joyce a delay, or a step in the wrong direction. All you need is for the ball to get down. Especially if it makes its way to Trout, because Trout doesn’t have the arm to gun Orlando down.

Feasibility Index: 5

Non-Triple No. 5

What it would take for a triple: Also easy! Line drive directly to center field, and you see Shane Robinson come in almost too much. The ball hung up more than he thought, and line drives right over your head in the outfield can be the most difficult plays to make. If this gets by Robinson, it’s an easy three bases. Just needed one or two more steps.

Feasibility Index: 7

Non-Triple No. 6

What it would take for a triple: So, look. I don’t want to play around with batted-ball trajectories, but I’m already playing around with conscious defender trajectories, so why stop there? This grounder very nearly hit third base. Inches, maybe a few feet away. All you need here: the ball hitting the bag and getting past Trevor Plouffe, finding its way into an awkward corner of the ballpark. Might end up with a close play at third, but so far in our hypothetical, Orlando has been consistently rewarded for trying to advance, so why not push it?

Feasibility Index: 3

Non-Triple No. 7

What it would take for a triple: Brian Dozier needs to boot this off his shoe. He already fielded the ball kind of awkwardly. Let’s make it just a little more awkward. So now the ball careens toward foul territory. The right fielder and first baseman close in on it, but they’re both looking up as they approach the ball, and they run into one another. You gotta make sure you have the baseball before you try to throw the baseball!

Feasibility Index: 1

Non-Triple No. 8

What it would take for a triple: Last season, there were 185 hits on pop flies. Yasiel Puig had five! And there was a triple, in August, hit by Yoenis Cespedes, against the Cardinals. All you need is a little miscommunication. And the team who, last year, led the American League in hits allowed on pop-ups: the Minnesota Twins. Orlando was leading off, so he could sprint. I have some of his triples timed at under 11 seconds. This took nearly seven seconds to come down. Let’s say there’s miscommunication, and the ball drops. Orlando hasn’t stopped running, because, why not? Then the fielders have to scramble to pick the ball up and throw it to third. Uh oh!

Feasibility Index: 4

Non-Triple No. 9

What it would take for a triple: There’s a rock in the infield! There’s never intentionally a rock, but there is sometimes accidentally a rock, and rocks make baseballs do funny things when they bounce off of them. The ball hits the rock and bounces almost straight up, but also over Marcus Semien’s head. The ball comes down in the shallow outfield, eventually, and the outfielders have to pick up the pace coming in to retrieve it. When there’s a play attempt at third, I guess Orlando makes a very creative slide?

Feasibility Index: 1

Non-Triple No. 10

What it would take for a triple: Oh no, another rock in the infield! Somebody better move those rocks!

Feasibility Index: 1

Non-Triple No. 11

What it would take for a triple: This is probably the worst camera angle I’ve seen in my life — it’s like something from a scouting trip to the AFL — but you’re seeing Orlando ground back to Jesse Hahn. That’s a bad way to triple, but it’s almost a very slightly possible way to triple. Let’s say, instead, Hahn doesn’t field the ball cleanly. Let’s say, instead, the ball hits him right in the kneecap! The ball ricochets off to the side, and Hahn collapses in agony. His teammates are distracted by their pitcher being in distress, so they’re slow to recover the ball in foul territory, and Orlando keeps going not because he’s a monster, but because he has to do his job and the play is still live. Eventually someone does pick up the ball and a trainer comes out to look at Hahn. Hahn gets up and he’s fine because sometimes things just hurt for a minute and I don’t want players to be injured in my hypothetical. There are already enough players getting injured in my reality.

Feasibility Index: 1

Non-Triple No. 12

What it would take for a triple: Oh no, there’s a rock in the outfield! I don’t know where all these rocks came from, but that grounder was still moving pretty well as it got to the outfield, and if it takes one funny bounce past Sam Fuld, Orlando’s off to the races. Fuld’s quick, but he’s not that quick.

Feasibility Index: 3

Non-Triple No. 13

What it would take for a triple: We’ve already more or less been over this one. It would be highly unlikely for Paulo Orlando to have two pop-up triples, but it would also be highly unlikely for Paulo Orlando’s first three major-league hits to be triples, so, here we are. Ben Zobrist settles under the pop-up. Orlando can book it, again, because he’s leading off, so there’s no risk. One wind gust causes the ball to glance off of Zobrist, to his left. It ends up in no-man’s land, and Orlando? Orlando ends up on third base.

Feasibility Index: 4

Non-Triple No. 14

What it would take for a triple: The play log says that Orlando grounded out softly to Brett Lawrie, and, visually, that’s true. But Orlando’s grounder took a high hop, and it’s not impossible to imagine Lawrie over-charging, with the ball getting past him down the line. It would also then scurry by the shortstop, and the left fielder would be taken by surprise, not expecting to get involved in this play. With this many triples, Orlando would have all the confidence in the world that he’s essentially bulletproof, so he’d just keep on running. He hit this grounder softly enough to be able to run like a madman.

Feasibility Index: 2

Non-Triple No. 15

What it would take for a triple: Last year, Torii Hunter was a -18 right fielder by UZR, and he was a -18 right fielder by DRS. This year he hasn’t gotten any younger, so we can imagine a worse read. Throw in just a hint of desperate last-second miscommunication between Hunter and the center fielder, and you have a baseball getting by both of them, rolling all the way to the fence in a 1-1 game. You know what happens when Orlando hits a ball to that fence.

Feasibility Index: 3

Non-Triple No. 16

What it would take for a triple: It’s Trevor Plouffe again, and he makes a fairly athletic play to prevent this ball from getting down the line. Yet, if this ball gets by him, it’s rolling for a while, with the left fielder starting over toward the gap. If the ball gets to the corner, it seems like a pretty easy triple for Orlando, even despite being pulled. You don’t see as many triples hit to the left side, but the space is there, and the ball was hit sharply but not too sharply. (The next time up, Orlando hit a triple.)

Feasibility Index: 4

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We have thus described a not-impossible reality in which Paulo Orlando has 21 triples through his first seven major-league games. That would stand as an all-time record, never to be broken. But, our hypothetical reality doesn’t match up with Orlando’s real actual reality, in which he’s accumulated a meager five triples through his first seven major-league games. That simply stands as an all-time record, maybe never to be broken.