Most Seasons With Exactly 1 Triple

A couple months ago, I listed the players who had the most seasons with exactly 1 stolen base. In this post, I look at a related topic: the most seasons with exactly 1 triple. It’s another strange and diverse list.

Here are the 17 players to have at least 8 seasons with exactly 1 triple:

Like with the stolen bases list, here we have a good mix of players, though like that list, it is a bit slanted toward catchers and lumbering corner-position types. With just 1 more 1-triple season, David Ortiz

will be alone atop the list. Since Big Papi has had exactly 1 triple in each of the past 5 seasons, I’m thinking the chances are pretty good that he gets there.

Ortiz is one of several players who made both lists (he’s had 8 years with exactly 1 steal). Graig Nettles

(7 years with 1 SB) and Dick Schofield (also 7 years with 1 SB) are the others. I guess those 3 are the most “Just Fast Enough” players in MLB history.

My favorite part of both lists is that they mix great hitters with part-timers and even a couple pitchers. On this list, the two pitchers are Hall of Famer Red Ruffing

and Deadball-Era star Jack Powell , who earned 44.5 WAR in his career. (Oddly, Powell’s nickname was also “Red.”)

Of the players on the list, Fred Lynn

had the highest single-season triple total, with 8 in 1976. He also hit 7 the previous year, tying with Harmon Killebrew ‘s 1961 for second-most. Killebrew’s 7-triple season is rather amazing, because he didn’t hit more than 2 triples in any other season. That was the first year of the Minnesota Twins; perhaps there was something funky going on with Metropolitan Stadium that year?

Lynn also has the most career triples of anyone on the list, with 43. Eddie Murray

had 35 and Gary Carter had 31. Cliff Johnson had the fewest, with just 10. Aside from his 8 seasons with 1 triple, Johnson had one 2-triple season, and that was it.

Javy Lopez

shares the record for the most consecutive seasons of exactly 1 triple; Lopez did it 6 straight years from 1996 to 2001. Jason Varitek and Chad Moeller also had 6 straight 1-triple seasons, both doing it from 2000 to 2005. Those 3 are all catchers, interestingly. Reid Nichols had 6 straight such years as well, from 1980 to 1985 (the first 6 years of his 8-year career). Finally, Lew Richie had 6 straight years of 1 triple from 1906 to 1911; Richie was a pitcher.

In addition to Ortiz, Del Rice

, Robin Ventura , Damion Easley , Greg Luzinski , Milton Bradley , and Freddie Fitzsimmons (another pitcher) have all done it in 5 straight seasons.

Here’s an odd fact: the first 7 players to amass at least 7 seasons with 1 triple were all pitchers: Powell, Fitzsimmons, Christy Mathewson

, Eddie Plank , Mordecai Brown , Babe Adams , and Pete Alexander . In the early years of baseball, triples were much more common, so I suppose only players who batted infrequently were likely to end up with just 1 in a season. And for the most part, only pitchers would bat infrequently year after year.