Ichiro’s HR highlights 2016’s one-time events

If you followed the 2016 MLB season, chances are you saw Max Scherzer register a strikeout, Kris Bryant launch a homer and Billy Hamilton swipe a base. Those were just a few of the notable events that occurred regularly throughout the year.

Then there were the sort of accomplishments that were much more difficult to catch — because they happened only once.

Here is a look at 10 prominent players (five hitters, five pitchers) who did something just one time in 2016.

HITTERS

Home run: Ichiro Suzuki, Marlins There has long been a questionable theory that Ichiro could have hit a lot more home runs, only if he had wanted to. But his career has turned out just fine despite a total of 114 roundtrippers, with the future Hall of Famer crossing the 3,000-hit mark in 2016. This also was the third straight season in which he has hit exactly one homer, and of all the players with that total, only Seattle’s Ketel Marte had more than Ichiro’s 327 at-bats. For good measure, the two-run shot off Philadelphia’s Hector Neris on Sept. 6 was his first long ball in 150 career plate appearances as a pinch-hitter and broke a homerless streak of nearly 700 plate appearances dating back to April ’15.

Opposite-field home run: Troy Tulowitzki, Blue Jays Tulowitzki didn’t lack power, belting 24 homers and slugging .443, but he didn’t exactly spread that power around. He hit .413 and slugged .904 when pulling the ball, and 23 of his homers went to dead center or left field. On Aug. 16, however, Tulowitzki took advantage of the short porch at Yankee Stadium, driving Anthony Swarzak’s hanging slider just over the right-field wall, not far from the line. With a projected distance of only 344 feet, it was Tulowitzki’s second-shortest big fly of the Statcast™ era.

Triple: David Ortiz, Red Sox Of all the accomplishments Ortiz put together in his farewell season, this might have been the most amazing — though he also stole two bases. When Big Papi stepped to the plate in a high-leverage spot against the Astros’ Luke Gregerson on May 14, it had been nearly three years since his last triple. But with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and Xander Bogaerts on first as the potential tying run, Ortiz launched a fly ball to center that sliced away from a diving Jake Marisnick. Ortiz motored to third in 13.05 seconds with the game-tying RBI, setting up his walk-off double two innings …

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