Safe at home? Soler had no chance to turn triple into homer

CHICAGO — Game 3 of the World Series was an eventful one for Jorge Soler in either the right or the wrong way, depending on your perspective.

On the positive note, Soler recorded two of Chicago’s five hits and fired a 93.4-mph laser to third base to nail Rajai Davis in the seventh inning. On the other hand, he wasn’t able to get to the Coco Crisp hit that scored Michael Martinez and tempted Davis to run to third in the Cubs’ 1-0 loss to the Indians. Many openly criticized Soler for seemingly failing to hustle out of the box on his seventh-inning triple, potentially robbing himself of the chance to try for home.

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We already used Statcast™ to show that neither Soler, Jason Heyward nor most anyone else had a chance to actually catch that Crisp hit, which had a 1.000 expected batting average. But what about the triple? Could Soler have potentially tried for home?

Game Date Time (air time/game time) Matchup TV Gm 1 Oct. 25   CLE 6, CHC 0 Gm 2 Oct. 26   CHC 5, CLE 1 Gm 3 Oct. 28   CLE 1, CHC 0 Gm 4 Oct. 29 7:30 p.m./8 p.m. CLE @ CHC FOX Gm 5 Oct. 30 8 p.m. CLE @ CHC FOX *Gm 6 Nov. 1 7:30 p.m./8 p.m. CHC @ CLE FOX *Gm 7 Nov. 2 7:30 p.m./8 p.m. CHC @ CLE FOX * If necessary | All times listed ET • World Series coverageShop for postseason gear: Cubs | Indians

That should be pretty easy to test, so let’s do that. First, we need to ask the following question: What’s the absolute fastest time that anyone has rounded the bases this year? If the fastest players in the Majors couldn’t have made it, then surely Soler, who missed considerable time this year with a left hamstring injury, couldn’t.

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Looking at the 2016 season, the fastest …

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