TRIVIA 2020

Somewhat misleading--one may end up there. (The other a Veteran's Committee-type guy whose moment has passed.)

ok, I have some time now and I was pretty damn close with my incorrect guesses!:

Rickey: first HR came at age 20, last at 44
Hornsby: first HR came just after his 20th birthday (+17 days), last at age 41

one of my other guesses was close too (KGriffeyJr), but just checked and he had no HRs in his final season as a 40 year old.

I still have no idea who the other ones are.

One of my incorrect guesses, Kaline, was close at the other end: hit his first HR at 18, his last two months shy of 40.

Also guessed Aaron: last HR at 42, first one a little over two months past his 20th birthday.

Beltre, another incorrect guess, wasn't quite as close: first at 19, but his last was seven months shy of his 40th. My fourth, Yaz, wasn't close: 44 (!) when he hit has last, but his first didn't come till he was almost 22.

julio franco?

should have been andruw but alas

Someone else guessed him...no. I'm going out for a bit; let me know if you want the last two (or, it's searchable on Google).

The other two (the only time I will ever use this): Rusty Staub, Gary Sheffield. The second might make you think "Yeah, of course"; I doubt anyone would think of the first.

That was a good question. Had me sifting through my memory banks for sure.

Most HR under each president

Biden: tied at 0
Trump: Trout 134
Obama: Pujols 272
W Bush: A-Rod 364
Clinton: Griffey 351
HW Bush: McGriff 137
Reagan: Schmidt 259
Carter: Schmidt 152
Ford: Schmidt 87
Nixon: Aaron 218
Johnson: Mays 181
Kennedy: Killebrew 139
Eisenhower: Mathews 313

— Jeremy Frank (@MLBRandomStats) January 20, 2021

i was hoping, and phew:

Most HR under each president:

Truman: Kiner 294
FDR: Foxx 353
Hoover: Ruth 182
Coolidge: Ruth 289
Harding: Ruth 119
Wilson: G Cravath 106
Taft: F Schulte 47
Roosevelt: H Davis 59
McKinley: B Freeman 46
Cleveland (both): S Thompson 85
Harrison: H Stovey 51

Who will lead Biden’s?

— Jeremy Frank (@MLBRandomStats) January 20, 2021

Juan Soto

That's neat...Best matches: Ruth/Hoover (roaring '20s), Griffey/Clinton (harder to explain...dot.com boom, home-run boom). Weirdest pairing: McGriff/H.W. Bush.

Crime Dog : War Criminal

My guess for Biden: Acuna

I found this fun, hope you will, too!

Longest gap between plate appearances in batter vs pitcher matchup since 1990:

6,233 days: Gary Sheffield vs Roger Clemens

Faced each other on July 25, 1990 (MIL/BOS)

Next time they faced off? Aug. 18, 2007 (DET/NYY)

(h/t @EliasSports)

— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) February 10, 2021

Interleague didn't start until 1997

...so I feel like that anything prior and after should be treated as Different Times.

Fact is still fun motion denied

this was posted to reddit, thought i'd share here:

There's a group of six players who all have something that only they have in common. I'll give you five of them, you try to answer with who the sixth player is and what it is they share.

Hank Aaron
Barry Bonds
Rickey Henderson
Mickey Mantle
Jim Thome

First thought was "power/speed?" Nope, Thome doesn't fit. "Late-career accomplishment?" Mantle doesn't fit.

so - if it helps the 6th person is Lance Berkman

I looked, still no idea.

Has to do with home runs

I feel like there are some edge cases having to do with switch-throwers but I'm too lazy to look up the #s rn lol.

You’re close!

Haha, no I saw the answers but felt like the list was incomplete because it doesn't include such edge cases^^.

I looked at the Reddit thread. I could have sat here for five years and not figured that out--an easy concept, but the kind of lateral thinking I'm not great at.

I’m terrible of keeping track of who’s right or left and would have never gotten it.

I was doing one of those Sporacles (still around)...Only franchise without a 200-hit guy?

Must be one of the more recent expansion teams ... Diamondbacks?

Yes, but not them--Luis Gonzalez had ~210 hits one year.

That one was so popular, let me try another. It's a long answer...Posnanski has a piece today that lists the HR leader for each letter in the alphabet. As an example, the easy first one: A = Aaron.

If you try it, here's a link to the piece where you can check your answers:

https://joeposnanski.substack.com/p/all-time-homer-leaders-by-letter?r=1jtu0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

i am ready to humiliate myself, going with my gut, no googling, 5 minutes or less

B is for bonds
Canseco
Dimaggio?
E
F
Gehrig
Hodges
I
Jackson
Killebrew
L
Mays
N
Ortiz
Pujols
Q
Rodriguez
Sosa
Thome
U
V
W
X
Yount
Zobrist

ugh, so many obvious names now that i look at the list, haha.

zero N position players in the hall of fame!

There's a good joke in Posnanski's piece having to do with your 'R' guess.

xpost

lol at me getting R wrong, too. 5-year-old me is astonished that i was wrong on this

reading through the piece now

Having said that, your guesses are better than mine would have been.

full circle, speaking of N's not in the hall of fame, I think graig nettles might be a good example of a guy who played with too many different teams

i guess, looking at his (fangraphs) stats more closely, a lot of value was derived from his superior defense at 3B, while the offense was merely consistently above average. HOF voters seem to discount that pretty commonly

Nettles did play for a lot of teams, more than I would have thought (6). Not sure if that'd be a factor with him, though; his identification with the Yankees is pretty strong (and his years there far outnumber anywhere else).

When Tracer posted something on another thread suggesting he'd always identify McGwire with the A's, I was surprised when I checked and saw that, indeed, such a high percentage of his games were played in Oakland (1329/1874). Shows how much he did, and how much press he got, during his St. Louis tenure.

re: that list my only humiliation is that I couldn't think of anyone for W

I'm just glad you guessed the right Willie M. for M.

(And I don't mean McCovey...)

there are many good M options, it turns out

mccovey, mcgwire, mantle...I thought about Murray and Mathews too!

musial too, as the link points out

i think harmon killebrew was kind of my grade school baseball flex. no one i knew had any clue who he was. i'd be like, "yeah, 573 home runs. that's FIFTH all time", and they would just kick me in the balls so hard

My favourite thing in the whole piece, right up there with Prince and Cecil tied in HR and Griffey/Musial's birthplace:

H: Ryan Howard, 382; Frank Howard, 382

This is definitely my favorite letter. It thrills me that two gigantic men named Howard, playing in different times and different places, climbed and climbed and, in the end, met at the top of Mount H.