Matt Wieters got his first major-league hit tonight, a stand-up triple. I wondered: was he the first catcher ever to have a triple as his first hit in the bigs? This is the kind of question that the amazing Baseball Reference Play Index is made to answer, and the answer is nope: in fact, Yorvit Torrealba did it — in his first major league plate appearance, no less! — in 2001.
Update: In fact, want to know another catcher whose first major-league hit was a triple? Dane Sardinha, the opposing catcher in tonight’s game!
Update: In case you’re not reading the comments — know who the opposing catcher was when Dane Sardinha got his first major-league hit? Yup — Yorvit Torrealba. Now that is a piece of baseball trivia for true connoisseurs.
Guthrie has 10 strikeouts in the first 6 innings but keeps getting in trouble; I think of it as being kind of hard to pitch a bad game when you strike out 10 batters, but in this connection B-R PI pulls up last month’s stinker of a start by Toronto’s David Purcey; 10 strikeouts, but 6 walks and 5 runs allowed, and he didn’t make it out of the 5th.
Update:
Thank you for this research. I was at the game with a friend and we wondered about catcher’s and triples right then. Ironically, I’m a Tigers fan and saw Sardinha’s triple on TV last year, but had forgotten it was his first hit. But when I read this, I remembered. This is the only place I could find the answer to this question. Good job.
Also, the catcher when Sardinha hit his triple was … Torrealba. It came in Interleague play. How weird is that?