Whatever happened to triples? If Pittsburgh Pirates DH Daniel Vogelbach can hit one, anyone can!

The biggest news Tuesday wasn’t the Houston Astros hitting five home runs in one inning off Nathan Eovaldi, or even the Boston Red Sox fan sitting in the Green Monster seats who caught two of those home runs.

No, the biggest news: Daniel Vogelbach hit a triple.

Let’s get this out of the way first: The Pittsburgh Pirates designated hitter is not the slowest player in major league history. That’s probably Ernie Lombardi, who possessed a legendary lack of speed. “Ernie Lombardi was a huge man, with huge, oak-trunk legs and huge feet and huge hands and a promontory with nostrils that protruded from a lumpy face,” Bill James once wrote of the Hall of Fame catcher. “As he got older, he acquired a huge belly, which he lugged around with a huge effort. His knees were too low to the ground, and his center of gravity was four feet behind him, so that he was never endowed by nature with adequate speed. As he got older, he slowed down, becoming surely the slowest player ever to play major league baseball well.”

But even Lombardi hit 27 triples in his career, including nine in his first full season in the majors.

Vogelbach is also not the slowest active player. Thanks to the marvels of Statcast, we can now measure these things. Vogelbach’s top sprint speed this season ranks in the third percentile of all players, so 97% of players have recorded a higher top speed. He’s been marginally faster than seven catchers, Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera, and … this is weird … Giancarlo Stanton. I’m not exactly sure what’s going on with Stanton. He doesn’t run anymore. I’m not sure if he’s incapable of running even moderately fast or just chooses not to run.

Whether or not he’s zooming around the bases, Stanton, at least, looks the part of a professional athlete. Vogelbach is built like the kid who played right guard on your high school football team, or maybe an undersized sumo wrestler, or the truck driver who has had a few too many greasy meals at the all-night diner. He is…