TRIVIA 2020

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.

“D” surprised me!

My reflexive guess was DiMaggio too, even though I knew he was under 400.

For what it's worth, the previous answer was the Rays: Aubrey Huff's 198 hits is the most in franchise history. Here's the Sporacle:

https://www.sporcle.com/games/smyth/mlb_hit_leaders_by_team

I missed five or six.

Oops, wrong Sporacle:

https://www.sporcle.com/games/Ben/ss_team_hits_leaders

Jesus the barves have a record on the books from 1894!!!

Haven't had a chance to try/read, but Joe. P's most-pitcher-wins by letter:

https://joeposnanski.substack.com/p/most-wins-by-letter?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

The three 300-game winners I guessed were all wrong.

I was a surprise!

the letter "I"

i was a surprise, it's a me, mario!

I love the gap between #1 and #2 for the Ys.

trying to think of who would be #2 there...chris young? it would help if i could think of a single non-Young Y pitcher.

YES

That's amazing...I probably would have guessed Yastrzemski.

i got 12 of those. very proud of getting "I"!

one to ponder:

what was the last team that had more triples than home runs in a full season?

had to be pre-deadball...
maybe the Cobb/Crawford/Heilmann(? not sure if all three played together) Tigers?

post-deadball! i was kinda shocked

it's post-expansion, even

like post-most-recent-expansion?! i might have guessed the 80's at some point. i know there was one year where Rollins and Reyes both had a shitload of 3b, but i don't see either of those teams having fewer HRs. just trying to think of modern teams that were known for speed and not-much power... Royals from about7 years ago comes to mind...

this is what i'm doing now instead of sleeping

ok, post...1977 expansion