Home Run of the Day: Luis Hernandez, New York Mets (Trot Time: 33.08 seconds) [video]
On the second pitch of the fifth inning, Luis Hernandez fouled a ball directly off the inside of his right foot. He immediately fell to the ground in pain. The trainer came out and, five minutes later, Hernandez was back in the batter’s box waiting for the next pitch. It came and Hernandez quickly deposited it in the right field seats. His trot wasn’t so quick.
With a foot that was in so much pain the Fox team mentioned that it “could be broken”, Hernandez did his best to trot around the bases. He reached first base in only 6.5 seconds, which is a slightly better than average speed. As he rounded the bag, though, you could tell how much pain he was in. It took him nine more seconds to get to second base and another eight seconds to touch third.
The pain was most evident as he turned for the home stretch, where he hopped on the non-hurt foot for a couple of steps. He eventually made it home without once pausing on the basepaths, becoming the second longest trot of the year. His possibly broken foot was a pretty decent excuse, though.
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Slowest Trot: Luis Hernandez, New York Mets – 33.08 seconds [video]
Other than the broken-foot trot of Luis Hernandez, the slowest trots of the day belonged to Juan Rivera (26.68 seconds) and Carlos Lee (25.48 seconds). Of course, those guys are just slow – it’s only *like* they broke their foot on the previous swing, not that it actually happened.
Quickest Trot: Andrew McCutchen, Pittsburgh Pirates – 17.35 seconds [video]
If only PNC Park had been built with the home team dugout on the first base side… As it is, with the Pirates’ dugout being on the third base side, every time a Pirates’ player hits a home run, he has to slow down as he approaches the plate so he can make the hard turn back towards the dugout. For the average Pirates’ player, this doesn’t mean anything – for Andrew McCutchen, it means a great deal. If he could just run through the plate without turning, he’d have been in the top 10 quickest trots at least two or three times already.
