Slow Like An Elephant
2007-03-29 15:36
When Mike Piazza plays his first game for the Athletics on Monday, three of the four slowest players of all time (and four of slowest six) will have played for the Oakland A’s. And that doesn’t even include Eric Karros, who is tenth.
It’s totally amazing that the A’s manage to replace Frank Thomas with an even slower player than Frank Thomas. Kinda like how Cheers managed to replace Coach with a character who was even dumber than Coach.
Somehow, we gotta get Paul Konerko in an A’s uniform before his career is over.
1. Interesting to see Canseco among the slowest players, given his status as MLB's first "40-40" guy
2. And another thing: maybe there's something about Oakland's stadium that depresses triples...?
3. 2 I think that's true. I've seen the park factors for triples in the past, and IIRC, Oakland's is under .90. Rickey Henderson was fast, but didn't he hit very many triples, either.
4. Maybe Piazza is slower than Thomas or their respective careers, but last year Thomas may well have been the slowest player in the history of baseball. For pete's sake, the guy couldn't make it to second on a gapper to the wall!
5. I can't believe Ben Grieve didn't make that list. I think he's still running out a grounder he hit in 2000.
6. Willie Aikens didn't have enough plate appearances to qualify. He had 125 doubles and 2 triples.
Strangely, he hit one triple in the 1980 World Series.
Ben Grieve has around 3600 PAs, so he didn't make the list. But he has 192 doubles and 5 triples.
Grieve had one triple in Oakland in 1998 and one in Detroit.
Another in Oakland in 2000. In 2001, he hit one in Tampa Bay and another at Florida.
7. I always thought Ernie Lombardi was considered the slowest guy of all time. Looking at his stats, he actually had 9 triples in one season early in his career. (Not too many after that, though.)
8. I have a feeling that in about 10 years, the bottom five last names on that list will all be "Molina".