In yesterday's Tater Trot Tracker post, I said that I thought this weekend might be a great time to see some speedy trots. With cold, rainy weather so prevalent over the country, and considering the way players had responded to that on Friday, it seemed like a good bet to see more of that over the weekend. That was definitely not the case on Saturday, when we had four trots well over 24 seconds, with two of them passing the 26-second mark. What do I know?
Let's get to the trots!
Home Run of the Day: Jake Fox, Baltimore Orioles – 26.69 seconds [video]
Jake Fox had more home runs than anyone in spring training this year. Some hoped that this would lead to a breakout year for Fox, but it doesn't seem to have happened. Fox did finally hit his first home run of the year on Saturday, though. Of course, some time in these last three weeks Fox forgot how to run the bases on his home run trot. His turn around first base was so tight that Fox was unable to touch the bag with his foot. He had to take a moment to return to the bag before continuing on to second. Obviously this slowed down his trot quite a bit, giving Fox the slowest trot on the day (but not even close to the slowest trot of the year). Something similar happened to Toronto's Alex Gonzalez last year, though Fox recovered better than Gonzalez.
Slowest Trot: Jake Fox, Baltimore Orioles – 26.69 seconds [video]
As I said above, Fox's missed-bag home run was slow, but not even close enough to the year's slowest home runs (ask Pat Burrell about that one). In Cincinnati, Reds catcher Ramon Hernandez hit a grand slam to bust the game open. His trot took 26.02 seconds to complete, nearly edging out Fox (video).
Quickest Trot: Ben Zobrist, Tampa Bay Rays – 18.96 seconds [video]
With all these slow trots from Saturday, it's easy to skip past the quicker ones. Of 27 home runs hit, four trots came in under twenty-seconds, with Zobrist's ninth-inning, game-tying blast the quickest of the bunch. Timely place to win the mark. The Rays would go on to win it later in the inning.
(Remember: I am running an experiment over the next couple of weeks. If you're interested in Tater Trot Tracker commentary during the day, follow the Tater Trot Tracker on Twitter at @TaterTrotTrkr. We'll see how it goes. You can also follow me at @Wezen_Ball.)
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