Toronto at Boston, April 7-10

Monday, April 07 2025 @ 04:00 PM EDT

Contributed by: Magpie

The road trip, off to a shaky start, continues with four games in Olde Fenway Park.

You surely heard about how Rafael Devers' season began with five utterly miserable games: 0-19, with 15 strikeouts.

Yeah, so much for that. In the five games since, Devers has gone 10-19 (.526/.625/.842) and whiffed just twice.

Alex Bregman, the man who moved Devers from 3B to DH, is settling in quite nicely (.341/.383/.591) and leads the AL in Hits and Doubles.

The Sox decided they weren't too worried when Krisatian Campbell, the 22 year old rookie pencilled in for second base, went 8-48 this spring. He went north with the ball club, and once they started playing games that actually count, Campbell immediately started hitting. Ten games into his MLB career, he sports a sweet .364/.476/.667 slash line. It's all downhill from here, kid.

Outfielder Masataka Yoshida is on the IL, along with almost half a pitching staff: starters Lucas Giolito and Brayan Bello, relievers Liam Hendriks, Kutter Crawford, Patrick Sandoval, and Chris Murphy. Hunter Dobbins started for them yesterday - it was his MLB debut. Tonight's starter, Richard Fitts, made his MLB debut a week ago against Texas.

And RF Wilyer Abreu is hitting .483/.595/.897 - really, he is - and moreover, each of those figures leads the league.

It's the Slash Line Triple Crown, as opposed to the more famous one (HR, RBI, BAVG). Time for a tangent....

The traditional Triple Crown has been achieved anywhere from 15 to 18 times, depending on when and what you feel like counting. Lots of folks seem to think the game begins with the 20th century, which would eliminatethe first three times the feat was achieved. Fair enough - I suppose I'm also willing to pass over Paul Hines in 1878 and Tip O'Neill in 1887 because the rules and the game and much else was very, very different. Okay, they did it, but still... So I begin with Hugh Duffy of the mighty Boston Beaneaters in 1894, and from there up to Miguel Cabrera in 2012.

The Slash Line Triple Crown is considerably more common. It's been done more than twice as often as the traditional Triple Crown - 43 times by my count. Rogers Hornsby and Ted Williams are the only players with more than one traditional Triple Crown - each man did it twice - but Williams had five Slash Lines crown (1941, 1942, 1947, 1948, 1957) with two of them - 1942 and 1947 - also being the traditional trilple crown. Hornsby had no less than seven Slash Line Triple Crowns, six in them in consecutive years for the Cardinals and one last time for Boston as he wandered the NL during the back end of his career (1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1928.) He hit for the traditional crown in 1922 and 1925.

Ty Cobb (1909, 1910, 1914, 1917) and Honus Wagner (1904, 1907, 1908, 1909) each had four Slash Line crowns. Cobb also had a traditional Triple Crown in 1909.

Nap Lajoie (1901, 1904), Stan Musial (1943-1948), and Barry Bonds (2002, 2044) each did it twice. Lajoie had a traditional Triple Crown in 1901.

And there are another 17 players who've managed the feat one time: Ed Delahanty (1902), Tris Speaker (1916), Babe Ruth (1924), Chuck Klein (1933), Lou Gehrig (1934), Jimmie Foxx (1938), Mickey Mantle (1956), Frank Robinson (1966), Carl Yastrzemski (1967), Fred Lynn (1979), George Brett (1980), Larry Walker (1999), Todd Helton (2000), Joe Mauer (2009), Miguel Cabrera (2013), Christian Yelich (2019), Juan Soto (2020). Five of those seasons - Klein, Gehrig, Mantle, Robinson, Yastrzemski - also saw the player achieve the traditional Triple Crown. And I do like how Miguel Cabrera did it the traditional way in 2012, and followed that up with his Slash Line triple a year later.

Hey, I don't expect Wilyer Abreu to join any of these groups, so I'm going to have my fun while I can.

Matchups!

Mon 7 April - Lucas (1-0, 0.00) vs Fitts (0-1, 4.50)
Tue 8 April - Berrios (0-1, 6.75) vs Crochet (1-0, 1.38)
Wed 9 April - Gausman (1-1, 3.87) vs Houck (0-1, 6.52)
Thu 10 April - Bassitt (1-0, 0.71) vs Buehler (1-1, 8.68)

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