Waiting for a Triple

If you’ve gone to see a Blue Jays game at the Rogers Centre this season, you might have seen a lot of cool things. You might have seen Daulton Varsho make a tough play look easy. You might have seen Varsho turn an easy play into the catch of the year. Perhaps you saw Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit the hardest batted ball that anyone has ever recorded at the Rogers Centre in the Statcast era. Or you could have watched five Blue Jays pitchers set a franchise record with 19 strikeouts in one game. If you were extra lucky, you might have even heard the oh-so-satisfying clunk of the ball against the railing as Myles Straw hit his first Blue Jays home run. 

One thing you won’t have seen or heard (or touched or smelled or tasted) is a triple. Through 16 games at home this season, the Blue Jays have yet to hit a three-bagger. Indeed, they’re in a three-way tie for last in MLB with one lonely triple all year. (George Springer tripled on April 4 at Citi Field.) None of the Blue Jays’ opponents have tripled in Toronto either. Just over 1,200 batters have stepped to the plate at the Rogers Centre in 2025. Fifty-two of those batters hit their way to second base. Forty-eight sent one into the seats and bought themselves a ticket around the bases. But no triples.

Truth be told, no one has even come particularly close to tripling. There certainly haven't been any inside-the-park home runs in Toronto. No runners have been thrown out trying to stretch a double into a triple either. 

I used the Extra Bases Taken Run Value Leaderboard on Baseball Savant to identify the costliest hold decisions runners have made at second base at the Rogers Centre this year. In other words, I looked for situations in which runners might have made a mistake by holding at second base instead of trying to stretch a double into a triple. Yet, none of the hold decisions I found were particularly egregious. If you’re curious to check them out for yourself, here’s a link to a compilation of the four costliest second base holds at the Rogers Centre this season. All four are Blue Jays runners. Perhaps a true speedster could have converted some of those doubles into triples, but it’s hard to blame any of Bo Bichette, Anthony Santander, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., or Tyler Heineman for holding up at second.

I also looked at the outfielder Arm Value Leaderboard on Baseball Savant, and I’d like to give a shout-out to a couple of Blue Jays outfielders for "preventing" a pair of triples. To be perfectly honest, there's a good chance neither of these plays would have been triples anyway, even with a much worse defender on the case. Statcast gives both of them a mere +0.01 defensive run value. Nonetheless, I was impressed. The first came on April 1 against the Nationals. Alan Roden showed off his strong arm in right field with a bullet to the cut-off man. Runner Alex Call looks over as he’s halfway to second base and realizes he has no chance to try for third. The second play was on April 14 against the Braves. Myles Straw ran down a ball in the right-center gap to hold the lightning-fast Eli White to a double. If Straw hadn't reached the ball so quickly, White very well could have bolted for third.

This article isn't a close statistical analysis like some of my previous pieces for Jays Centre. I'm not trying to diagnose a legitimate problem with this one. To be honest, I just like triples. I think they’re one of the most entertaining plays in baseball, and I’m disappointed that fans in Toronto haven’t been able to see one in person this season. This past March/April was only the sixth month in the past 24 years (that's as far back as there FanGraphs splits tool goes) in which there wasn't a triple hit at the Rogers Centre. That's only six triple-free months out of 130 months of baseball. What's more, this past March/April featured 15 Blue Jays home games. That's more than in any of the other five triple-free months. And now the drought has lasted into May! This might not mean anything for the Blue Jays going forward, but that doesn't mean it's not worth talking about. It's weird!

Indeed, the fact that no hitter has recorded a triple at the Rogers Centre yet this season is mostly an effect of small sample size weirdness. It’s only been 16 games. Eventually, someone is going to triple in Toronto. That said, it’s not entirely random. In the early 2000s, the Rogers Centre was a great place to hit triples. According to Baseball Savant's three-year rolling park factors, the Blue Jays’ stadium ranked among the top 12 most triple-friendly stadiums every year between 2003-12, ranking as high as sixth in the 2006-08 window. Then the triples disappeared.

The Rogers Centre has been a below-average venue for triples in each three-year period since 2013. It probably didn't help when the 2022-23 offseason renovations brought in the outfield walls; the triple factor in Toronto reached its lowest point of the 21st century in 2023. However, the Rogers Centre’s triple factor rebounded in 2024 to its highest single-year peak since 2016, despite additional offseason renovations that significantly shrunk the field's foul territory.

Ultimately, it takes several years' worth of data to properly understand how a ballpark’s dimensions affect the prevalence of different batted ball outcomes. That's especially true for triples. Three-baggers are uncommon enough that any stadium's park factor for triples will fluctuate quite a bit from year to year. So, we're still learning what kind of park the renovated Rogers Centre truly is. This ongoing triple drought is another piece of the puzzle.

That's all well and good, but I'm hoping the next puzzle piece the Blue Jays take out of the box is a bit more exciting. If small sample size weirdness can lead to a month without a triple, perhaps it can also lead to a month that's stuffed to the gills with triples. A fan can dream!