First Blood: Troy’s Leadoff Home Runs
Saturday, Kyle Mock became the 16th member of an elite club: Trojans with a leadoff homer.* It’s the first leadoff homer for a Trojan since Drew Frederic hit a dinger in his first at-bat against Louisiana last year.
Like Frederic, Mock joined the club with just one pitch, the fifth Trojan to go one pitch, one run to start the game.*
Unfortunately, for the first time, Troy lost a game in which its first batter took his first pitch yard.*
There’s a lot to get into, but let’s start by watching that thrilling moment again.
Here’s the problem. Those asterisks at the top of the page are there for a reason: I could only find box scores dating back to 2000.
But, since the turn of the millennium, Kyle Mock hit the 25th leadoff homer by a player in a Troy uniform. It’s also the third leadoff homer by a current member on the roster, since sixth-year veteran Rigsby Mosley is still on campus, and it’s the first leadoff homer of the Skylar Meade era.
This season is also the sixth year in a row that a Trojan hit a leadoff dinger, going all the way back to a 2017 loss against Coastal Carolina.
See? No asterisks.
Here’s the data I pulled:
The first thing you’ll notice is that Adam Bryant had himself a MONSTER year in 2010. Seriously. Ronald Acuña himself would be proud.
Troy dominated opponents that May, losing just five games, unfortunately including the May 30 Sun Belt Championship against FIU.
That trend stretches back the year before, too, as Chad Watson shared leadoff duties with Adam in the early part of the 2010 season, and Miles Hoyle was the first guy out of all three to go yard in his first at-bat.
More importantly, Chad and Adam are the only two Trojans with multiple leadoff homers AND first-pitch leadoff homers. Both first-pitch dingers came against ULM, almost a year apart to the day.
A few other things stood out to me:
- Coby Smith was the first post-Y2K Trojan to hit multiple leadoff homers in the same season… just eight days apart. He’s tied with Adam Bryant for the shortest time between multiple leadoff homers.
- So far, Matt Sanders’ streak is the longest: 371 days.
- Dru Rymer hit a homer in Troy’s first at-bat of the 2006 season. No other Trojan has accomplished this.
- You may spot a certain coach on this list: Adam Godwin was the first player under Bobby Pierce to hit a leadoff home run.
- Rigsby Mosley put up a fight for his first homer. The count was 1-2, but he hit two foul balls before going yard.
- That’s also the only postseason leadoff homer for the Trojans since 2000.
- Clay Holcomb’s 2014 bomb against Alabama is the Trojans’ only leadoff homer against a Power Five-level team.
- Adam’s leadoff homer against South in 2010 was part of the Trojans’ largest victory over the Jags ever.
These notes are cool and all, but we all know the real question: How well does Troy actually do when it strikes first blood? The answer, despite Saturday’s loss, is still very good.
Before that first pitch was thrown Saturday, Troy won 75% of its games when it hit a leadoff home run. That number is only down to 72% though.
That number only inches up to 72.7% since Troy joined the Sun Belt, but it jumps to 76.9% at home and falls to 70% on the road. Up until Saturday, Troy was undefeated after hitting a homer on the first pitch of the game.
Troy averages 8.92 runs per game after hitting a leadoff homer, and averages giving up 5 runs. That’s a 4-run margin of victory, usually. Problem is, Troy only met one of those averages Saturday.
The point of this is that the loss was an outlier, when you put it into perspective. Even if if you see Troy’s first batter take the other team yard, just know you’re in for a fun game.
After all, there are eight other players in the lineup.
