A Yankee Stadium Rarity

In 2009, the first season played at the New Yankee Stadium, the Yankees had 3,177 plate appearances at home.  Throughout all of those plate appearances, they hit only five triples.  That means one triple roughly every 635 plate appearances or so.  In other words: doesn’t happen often.  Yet, in this young 2010 season, with only 118 plate apperances under their belt, the Yankees have hit three triples.  That’s not really the story, though.  The story is that Curtis Granderson last night hit triples in consecutive at-bats.

Now, we all know that Yankee Stadium is a pretty easy place to hit home runs.  However, statistically it still played as a slight pitcher’s park (pretty much neutral, really) because it’s much harder to hit doubles and triples.  If the ball doesn’t clear the fence, it’s pretty easy to hold the runner to a single.

Granderson in his career, though, has been a triples machine.  He had an absurd 23 in 2007, 13 in 2008, and eight last year, despite having a down season.  For the most part I assumed that coming to the Yankees would mean that a good chunk of those triples would simply turn into home runs (hopefully), doubles, or singles.  They still probably will; 2 ABs in one game is obviously the smallest of sample sizes.  But I think it’s worth noting just how rare an accomplishment Granderson’s triples are and how those hits reflect Granderson’s unique toolset that is different than any other Yankee player’s in recent memory.

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