Josh Hamilton Slugs 4 Home Runs In Baltimore

With his fourth home run of the game - his fourth home run of the game! - Josh Hamilton had his quickest home-run trot of the game. Not by a whole lot, but by a little, which I think is a little surprising since you’d think one would want to soak that sort of thing in. But what do I know, it’s not like I’ve ever hit four home runs in a game before. I don’t think I’ve even hit four home runs in a video game before, with an entire team, much less one player. Baseball video games are so hard!

I think the Tater Trot Tracker is an underrated resource, myself. It’s of very little practical value, but it adds to the story - the story of baseball - which is a welcome quality in a statistic. Hamilton’s had faster trots and slower trots than he had Tuesday night, but Tuesday night, he had four trots, and thanks to Granillo we’ve got numbers for all of them. That’s not not neat.

So, as you’d expect following Hamilton’s four-homer game, there are some disgruntled Reds fans out there, openly wondering where the Josh Hamilton trade ranks on the Reds’ all-time worst list. It’s up there. It’s probably not Milt Pappas-for-Frank Robinson bad, but it’s up there.

The Josh Hamilton trade is, unquestionably, the former. It looks bad now. It looks really, really bad. But it was a bold and inspired move to trade him. No, really. Take the name out of the analysis and revisit the scenario.

Nobody has ever hit five home runs in one baseball game before. Not in the major leagues, which is the only baseball we care about. Josh Hamilton didn’t hit five home runs, either, but he did hit four home runs and a double, and it wasn’t a ground-ball double down the line. It was a ... it was a very long fly-ball double. This is about where it landed:

That close. That was in the fifth inning, and it would’ve gone for Hamilton’s third homer. Now, had that gone for Hamilton’s third homer, there’s no telling whether he would’ve gone on to hit another two homers, but it’s fun to pretend, so, sure, Josh Hamilton came just several feet away from a five-homer game.

In the first inning, Hamilton blasted a first-pitch outside curveball to center field.

In the third inning, Hamilton blasted a 2-and-0 outside fastball to left field.