Where have all the triples gone?

In a recent discussion with a friend who works for a sports network with a four-letter name, we chatted about the rise in home runs and doubles this season. My friend suggested that “singles are becoming doubles, and triples are becoming home runs,” which seems plausible at first glance, but after the conversation ended I kept lingering on those triples.

The Twins have hit 13 triples so far this season - five from Jorge Polanco, four off the bat of Byron Buxton, and one each by Ehire Adrianza, Eddie Rosario, Mitch Garver (surprise), and Miguel Sano (more surprise) - putting them in the middle of the pack across the league. Still, that number seemed low to me, so it became time to break out the statistics.

A quick glance does show a fluctuation in triples over the last three seasons, but 2018’s three-bagger count went up from 2017’s:

• 2016: 873 triples
• 2017: 795 triples
• 2018: 847 triples
• 2019 (through All-Star Break): 416 triples - on pace for 754

Still, this year’s MLB hitters are on pace to smack well below 800 triples, a drop from recent years.

But where are these triples going?

To dive deeper into these statistics, I enlisted the help of my father, who’s a lot better with computers than I am, and he tabled and graphed statistics from the last ten seasons. (Stats from 2019 are through July 3.)

As a baseline, we see that at-bats, plate appearances, hits, and batting average have remained generally steady over the past ten seasons, so our total numbers will be proportionally close to their percentages from year to year.

Before getting into triples, let’s see if singles really are turning into doubles.

statistics graphed by Tom Monitto

statistics graphed by Tom Monitto

Starting in 2014, we can clearly see that singles are indeed tumbling at the expense of doubles, which valleyed that year before shooting upward, a growth that has revived following a drop in 2018. So this part of the premise appears strong.

Now, on to the upperclassmen of base hits.

statistics graphed by Tom Monitto

statistics graphed by Tom Monitto

While we can observe a slight drop in triples over the last five seasons, it’s not enough to account for the strong rise in home runs over the same period of time.

However, many have correlated the increase in home runs with an increase in the other two outcomes - walks and strikeouts. Let’s see if this adds new information.

statistics graphed by Tom Monitto

statistics graphed by Tom Monitto

Pay attention to the Y-axis of the strikeouts graph: despite the flat-looking slope of the line, that is a rise of over four percentage points in a ten-year span. Walks have zigzagged a little, but have similarly been rising since 2014 (with that 2018 hiccup again).

But once again, these rises are too high to account for the drop in triples.

So where are all the triples going? We’ve only got a partial set of information here to assist any guesses, but the trends in these graphs can lead to a conclusion. As singles and triples have dropped while doubles, home runs, walks, and strikeouts have risen, perhaps the answer is that teams are turning away from the style of player who can leg out singles and triples, instead looking for hits that travel over or off the wall.

Maybe triples are becoming home runs after all.