let’s play: Immaculate Grid!

https://www.immaculategrid.com/

100000% chance that all you guys are going to be better than me, I’ve only managed to complete this three times in the two and a half weeks I’ve been playing.

Baseball Twitter is big into this, people love finding the most obscure picks for each square. I think the lowest 0.1% pick I got for some square was Freddy Sanchez (Pirates who were also Giants) 😎.

Anyway it’s really fun to play, new grid every day but you can’t play the old ones!

Sorry some of you are lying with your immaculate grids there’s just no way you just know a guy named Bilbo Bogtrotter who played for the Reds before WWII

— jayne (@GI_Jayneee) June 26, 2023

My lowest score today was 0.5% for the bottom left square Ian Kinsler

Rough today because I don’t know much about two of today’s franchises!

I tried this, but I don't think I understand it. For today's, you're supposed to name any pitcher from any of those five teams who struck out 200+ batters in a season? I clicked inside each grid, selected a name...and I'm not sure how I did.

I’m pretty pleased with my answers today despite my lack of Twins knowledge burning me badly.

Whichever Rogers twin played for the Twins didn’t get 40 & the only other closer I know for them is Jhoan Duran, so…
https://i.postimg.cc/1zmKR9M1/IMG-4433.jpg

This game is awesome!

yeah this is fun!

Can you guys share your answers behind the hide text if you don’t mind, I love seeing what other people put down

had to cheat a bit on the middle square

andrew miller - jackie bradley jr. - jonathan papelbon
luis arraez - kyle lohse - joe nathan
miguel cabrera - prince fielder - mariano rivera

7/9 today, I usually blank out on the "played for team A and team B" squares. I don't look anything up, where's the fun in that?

Sammy Sosa - Albert Belle - Cal Ripken Jr.
x - Francisco Lindor - Mike Piazza
x - Carlos Santana - Ichiro

guessed a couple wrong today, shouldn’t try to get so cute

😎
My Giants knowledge getting it done today.

https://i.postimg.cc/6qRdYSCM/IMG-4548.jpg

ok this is great

i biffed the houston/tb one today.

Literally only got that one cos it was mentioned in the commentary of some game I was watching

I finally figured this out a few days ago (duh)...Same as Thermo for today's: 8/9. Stared at the screen for 10 minutes, couldn't think of anyone for Houston/TB. I don't know how to copy/hide my grid, but my most obscure correct answer was Dickie Thon for Houston/Philadelphia.

having infinite time to stare at the thing is not going to be good for my productivity

Having checked the Houston/TB answers (five, I think), I'm just glad I gave up--I would have still been sitting there in 2029.

got 9/9 this time, all higher profile and/or al east teams made it easy for me

8/9 the only Phil/LA player I could think of was Dick Allen

i went with Utley

Looking at the NFL/NBA versions, man I don't know a damn thing about those aside from the 49ers (sort of) and Mavericks.

I had Utley too, although I like Dick Allen better as an answer. I expect I'll ace all the stat/award stuff and struggle with the upper-left part of the grid; I just don't pay enough attention to player movement that doesn't involve Jays and/or stars.

8/9 again--missed Tigers/Rockies. Rockies are extra-hard because who can name any Rockies pitchers? Tried to hide/display my grid on a testing thread, all I got were 8 green squares and one white one.

That’s the one I missed too

got lucky with Todd Zeile for CO/NY - I was thinking of his time with the Mets

8/9, struggled even with the Tigers/Braves

Yeah 8/9 for me too but a different one I think
https://i.postimg.cc/Z5VjSyh2/IMG-4668.jpg

I watched a LOT of bad baseball this year for this one.

for the Barves answers i really knocked the rarity numbers out of the park: Darrel Evans, 1%; Ron Gant, 2%; Gary Sheffield 3%

Yeah, you should include your rarest answers along with your score; mine were Eddie Matthews for the Braves/Tigers and Joe Torre for the Braves/Cardinals, both 2%.

8/9, I got tripped up by the Tigers/Rockies square (as did most people).

killed the braves column: mike hessman (det), ken oberkfell (stl), claudell washington (nyy) all 0.2%

but i had no col/det and i tried to get too fancy with the 40+ homers

Yeah if it helped I put Goldie for the middle right one and in retrospect, why

So is the rarity score actually one of the objectives? I haven't been playing that way, but I will if it is.

i would guess that most people playing the game can probably answer most of the questions (rockies/tigers aside), so yeah rarity is a thing. which is nice for you, as i bet you'll totally kick ass at it

Just a function of being older. When I answered Joe Torre for the Braves/Cardinals, that for me is an obvious answer: perennial All-Star with the Braves, an MVP with the Cardinals. But he was 2% of the correct answers. I'll still struggle with the intersecting teams--and will usually be happy if I can come up with even one answer--but I will go for more offbeat stat/award answers.

9/9, really concentrated on less obvious answers: all but one under 10%, six 5% or under, three under 1%. The one name that escaped me was J.A. Happ for the Jays 20-game winner, so I settled for Morris--who surprisingly was only 3% anyway.

Rarity Score: 62.

If they added a time component to this, I'd be dead.

8/9.
Could not FOR THE LIFE OF ME name a single A/Pirate, the only reason I got the reliever is cos I read about him being picked up by the Pirates off waivers.
https://i.postimg.cc/63hPG7Ct/IMG-4734.jpg
Sorry for letting you down with my lack of Pirates knowledge, Mookieproof.

What’s funny is your top right answer could have been used for the one you didn’t get!

That's who I used for my top left (I was pretty sure but not 100%). Could have used Jeff Kent twice too, if you were allowed to. I actually found Cy Young/MVP a little tricky since double-winners have been somewhat arbitrary. Best example: Rice beat out Guidry in '78, but Clemens beat out Mattingly in '86. I thought that's what happened, but again, wasn't 100% sure, so I went with a safe 36% choice there.

xp I didn’t know that until you said so, I had two answers for that top right square and Cutch was a more obvious choice

Let me know what your Jays answers were, Thermo. I had (working down) Al Oliver, Candy Maldonado--both under 1%--and Morris at 36%.

Those are all solid 80s answers!

I had Liriano, Pillar & Clemens (6%, 10% & 21%)

Unfortunately I chose the most obvious answers Jose Bautista, Brandon Belt, Roy Haaladay. I have plenty of room for improvement in this game.

I came up with what might be the only Immaculate Grid with the same answer for all nine squares (if you include a major award and a major statistical benchmark--there are guys who've played for nine teams, so that would be the other way to go). This is extremely easy.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ib_kzXqxUdy4qWeNf2c_Q72Ka0UHxIZXq1d9ufTfll8/edit?usp=sharing

8/9, couldn't start to think of a Pirates/Jays crossover. Rarity score:304

Jason Kendall - Ray Knight - Barry Bonds
Barry Zito - Brandon Belt - Willie
Bob Welch - Roy Halladay - Sandy Koufax

Ray Knight was supposed to be Gary Carter - 'long career, played in Canada, might have made a pit stop in Pittsburgh?' - and still wrong

I had Bob Welch for his 27 win season my first year playing rotisserie baseball, age 9 - also Bobby Thigpen & Cecil Fielder... my roto talent scout career was all downhill from there

We don't need to get into specifics, but not good at all today. (I did figure out that you can think in terms of franchises, so I was able to use the Expos in place of the Nationals.)

4/9 - Chris Young for Rangers X Padres and Johnny Damon/Julio Franco/Paul Molitor for SB

Gotta be Steib? Never got that far.

Yup.

I don't think I would have got that without your nudge...so I finished up: 7/9, 216. Also missed Jim Abbott--never an AS, much to my surprise.

It didn't make sense he wasn't picked for the '91 game--7.6 WAR for the year, 3rd in Cy Young voting, and the greatest story in the world--but checking, he had a much better second-half than first.

I MADE THE SAME MISTAKE!!! How was that dude never an all star?!

I know this is maybe kind of tasteless, but I just realized I'm re-watching Twin Peaks right now, where a one-armed man figures prominently...and the show debuted April 8, 1990, one day before the Angels opened Abbott's sophmore season.

Honestly, how he did what he did was amazing. And he never wanted to call attention to that.

Thermo: so-so rarity through eight, messed up Twins/Braves. But I did, for the first time, manage to use every Jays fan's favourite pitcher--or at least tied with Mitch Williams--and your Facebook namesake.

https://i.postimg.cc/KY4gtSK6/grid.jpg

Just got my best ever score today. 2.85%

https://postimg.cc/bs0pSdg9

Nice! This is where Buzza would pop in every time and twist the knife in with his 2.84%, so I'm happy to say 8% today:

https://i.postimg.cc/xTRMcj86/grid.jpg

One answer in common. The one I thought for sure would be a low decimal for me was Greenwell.

Remembering that EE played a few games in left always pays off

9 today, 17 for the weekend:

https://i.postimg.cc/CLTWgg0s/grid.jpg

Guessing there are two or three people on here besides myself who remember why Larrin LaGrow was famous for 15 minutes.

Lerrin...

I do not, so this can be where you tell me!

Go to "Bert Campaneris bat throwing incident: 1972 ALCS; proud to say I was watching!

]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lerrin_LaGrow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEBMZBEgxQI

Some context, and a better clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBY4zlEAnXA

9/9, 6, thanks to a) my fading memories of the '90/91 Score #1 Draft Pick subset, and b) my HOF third baseman (but I'm not going to talk about Judy--in fact, we're not going to talk about Judy at all). Starting Monday, this will count as a 7.5% rarity.

https://i.postimg.cc/TP3QddzD/grid.jpg

9/9, 12%. my limited knowledge of first round picks really hurt me here - i killed it on some of the other squares

https://postimg.cc/kBGv36Fw

I calculate a best-ball of 3.1% between us.

9/9, 9. A lot of go-to's for me here, but I think it's the first time I've used Clete Boyer--third baseman like his brother, but took a chance on SS.

https://i.postimg.cc/rmWHpt8W/grid.jpg

Something you can sign up for (free) if you want to: your stats.

https://i.postimg.cc/0NbZxVLQ/immaculate.jpg

For me, the worst sort of Pandora's Box. I've gotten to where I spend minimal time on this, but once any kind of a rating or streak or anything statistical is involved, that's when I become obsessive--why I have to stay off the Internet Scrabble Club.

9/9, 14--normally not great for an open-grid Saturday, but I actually think it's difficult to keep rarity down on this one, especially in the strikeout boxes.

https://i.postimg.cc/52BPqK6p/grid.jpg

I did the signing up. My most used player: Gary Sheffield.

I signed up too, but because my computer often resets--after a cache clean-up, for instance--my history has been erased about three or four times now. The current history only goes back about 30 grids, so it's kind of meaningless. Anyway, for what's there, Joe Carter is my most-used, followed by Baines, Dick Allen, and Tommy Davis.

Had a good one today (10 rarity).

One great thing is they've finally synched up what you do on a desktop with what you do on a laptop--in the stats, but also each day's grid.

my top 4 guys after Sheff: Tris Speaker, Gaylord Perry & Matt Stairs

Speaker's a bit of a surprise in that he splits his career almost equally between two teams...I guess you use him as a category guy. Carter/Baines/Allen/Perry are good because they're strongly identified with one (maybe two) teams, but played for many others that are forgotten. Sheffield's great for that too, although he had good seasons almost everywhere he went, so I'd always get at least 5% rarity whenever I used him.

Aaahhhhhhh - was at 1.5 after 8 answers and got #9 wrong!!! (Was going for obscure but was off by 21 home runs for 300) Ted Kluszewski

For me, pretty much the easiest grid possible:

https://i.postimg.cc/q7wFZsvP/grid.jpg

3%, but will probably drop to 2% by day's end. Who was your wrong guess? My final answer was Norm Cash for 300/.300--wasn't 100% sure about the 300 HR, but he actually cleared the bar by quite a bit with 377.

A friend gave me an autographed copy of Johnny Pesky's autobiography last week, so I had been recently looking at his BRef page.

My wrong guess is I’m hidden text above

*in hidden

Missed that...yeah, I would have thought 300 too; have used him a few times.

weird. it just forgot my last 10 or so games. never had that happen with it before.

Happens to me every time I do any kind of routine browser maintenance, which is why, as I said, the stats thing will never be meaningful for me. It tabulates 51 grids right now for me out of the entire ~700, pretty much all of which I've tried. (Also, you can just abandon a grid after a wrong answer, which I usually do, and they don't figure in...like today's: surprsied Jim Edmonds never got 2,000 hits.)

So I guess we’re all setting personal high scores today

Ha--you beat me here. 9/9, 0%; funny guys.

https://i.postimg.cc/SKZkCJJH/grid.jpg

Actually spent around 20 minutes on this one, rejecting guys I was sure would get 1%.

Started out with the intention of using all Jays, then switched over to Ball Four and Bouton's follow-up for the last six.

i just typed random names and then scrolled down until i found one from before 1940 that only played one year.

If were able to pick Babe Ruth (most common answer for every box) nine times, you'd end up under 4% for rarity.

<hide>rico brogna, junior noboa, pete lacock, jon matlack, eddie gaedel, mickey morandini, wally pipp, moonlight graham, vern law</hide>

ah well

Can't believe that Garry Maddox and his eight consecutive Gold Gloves never made a single AS team. Not even in '76, when he hit .330 and finished fifth in MVP voting (he was .321 at the break, and slugging just under .500). "Two-thirds of the Earth is covered by water, the other one-third is covered by Garry Maddox"--but he didn't cover the bottom left-hand square for me today.

Todays was wildly easy. Tried to limit it to ex jays. Wound up with my lowest score ever (to be expected i guess)

https://postimg.cc/vDJ2ssfm

Nice! Looks like we came in about the same:

https://i.postimg.cc/rmVMbpp4/grid.jpg

I think I've had three other under-10% in the last month or so. Most days now I'm out after two or three boxes.

https://i.imgur.com/MDzEXQc.jpeg

Upper right being the most memory-holed player

Jay Johnstone! Famous flake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Johnstone#Clubhouse_prankster.

20 on today's wide-open grid, half of it Willie Hernandez in the Cy/MVP box. When I look at the 11 people you could name, I'd say he's definitely the least famous, but I guess Don Newcombe is the best guess, being the distant pass (and also the very first Cy Young winner).

This was a 9 this morning, but it's dropped to a 5:

https://i.postimg.cc/fTPw5XW0/grid.jpg

3 today:

https://i.postimg.cc/FFCdTp8Z/grid.jpg