Bobby Witt and the modern triples record

Bobby Witt Jr. has a shot at breaking the modern record for triples in a season.

Triples are one of the most exciting plays in baseball. You tend to need multiple things to go right to pull one off. Most players have to hit the ball down into the right-field corner, or the gap in right-center and get a helpful bounce off the wall. Bobby Witt Jr. is not like other players, and he does not need any fortuitous bounces to get to third.

His triple this week against Cleveland is probably a double for anyone else in the Major Leagues, but Bobby is so fast and aggressive in stretching singles into doubles and doubles into triples. That was his ninth triple of the year already for him, which puts him one behind the league leader, Jarren Duran. Last year, Bobby led the majors with just 11 triples, so he is way ahead of his 2023 pace, and has an outside shot at the modern triples record.

No one is ever going to break the all-time triples record. It was set by Owen “Chief” Wilson in 1912. He had 36 triples, but his homefield also had a 462 foot fence in center, so hitting a triple in that massive outfield would have been a lot easier. In fact, almost all single-season triples leaders are from the dead ball era with 30 of the top 32 seasons being from 1930 or before. Those other two are Dale Mitchell and Curtis Granderson who both had 23 triples in 1949 and 2007 respectively.

Curtis Granderson was not the name I would have guessed for who the modern record holder would be. He was not a prolific triples hitter, though he had a lot more than an average player. Willie Wilson, Jose Reyes, and Carl Crawford were where my mind headed first, and Willie holds the Royals record at 21. It was none of those prolific triples hitters, instead it is Granderson. His second-best triples total in a season was 13, a full ten behind whatever happened in that 2007 season. Just like a triple, the record holder must have had a cluster of lucky bounces to get that many.

Bobby is going to have to pick up the pace a bit to catch Granderson. Nine triples in 86 games is one every 9.6 games or almost 17 per 162 games. It is not likely that he will be able to make up the six triples that he is off pace, but it is far from impossible. In that 2007 season, Granderson had two months with 6 triples back to back. If Bobby did that in July and August, that would put him at 21 going into the last month of the season. It could be just one more thing for Royals fans to enjoy about this fun bounce-back season.