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

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

Increasingly rare sub-10 today (9):

https://i.postimg.cc/28hx0d6p/grid.jpg

Roger Repoz, who is alive and 84, had a great name.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWjpOAy5zCM

The announcer in that clip somehow fails to mention that not only did Lavagetto's hit win the game, it broke up Bill Bevens' no-hitter.

5 today--eight decimals and Whitey Ford at 2%.

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

Looking over the 29 possibilities for Cy/200 wins, I'm almost positive Jim Perry would have been the best answer.

I probably would have beat you today had I not got my last answer wrong! (CY young / 200 wins)

Details! Guessing you got the Cy correct and 200 incorrect. (I think it's just us two at this point, so probably no need to hide.)

I take it back, if I don’t count the square I got wrong and you got 2 - I was only 0.1% ahead of you!

https://postimg.cc/CRhrLBkk

But who was the incorrect answer? Just curious.

I was not only surprised to learn Burt Blyleven never won a cy young; neither had my back-up answer of robin Roberts

fun fact: my wrong answer is behind only Phil Neikro for highest career WAR for a SP to never have won a Cy Young since they started handing it out. then it's Nolan Ryan and then my backup answer (tho the award didn't exist for the first half - and peak - of his career)

I think that was part of sabermetrics adopting Blyleven as a HOF cause, that he had had such little Cy support over the years. (Will again mention my epic '73 Cy Young argument with Alex in SF soon after I starting posting here.) With Roberts, I think it's more that his peak predated the Cy.

7 today:

https://i.postimg.cc/KvW6GD86/grid.jpg

If you type in "Barry Bon," I like how auto-fill then gives you a choice between Barry Bonnell and Barry Bonds.

We used the same guy for pitched/negro leagues! (Surprised he was that high)

I was a bit surprised too--I remember the first time I used him, over a year ago, he was under 1%.

It’s the cool name I bet

This was a 7 earlier this morning, down to a 5 now; suspect it will drop to 4 or even 3, being wide open.

https://i.postimg.cc/mDhVc5jL/grid.jpg

Very proud of my Jays/Phillies/Jays symmetry working down the rows. (No idea why I went for Phillies.) Wish I could have made that even more so with a Canadian Jay for the bottom right.

Dammit. Got one wrong and finished with a score of 100.6!! If I hadn’t messed that up, it easily could have been a personal best

Under 1% on a legitimate grid? I rounded to 1 once, but don't think I was ever under...Interested in your wrong guess, and also in the right ones.

I was being clever and using Batista for CF, but he didn’t have a career WAR over 40?!?!

Here’s my near miss: https://postimg.cc/cKdnnFGL

Settled in at 4% today, so one of my 10 best.

10-day streak: 75/11/68/68/6/4/27/70/22/12. Certain days I just give up on rarity: "Okay, Randy Johnson, that's the best I can do."

That streak ended the next day..."Only One Team" usually kills me, but a 7 today.

https://i.postimg.cc/pT34VYGZ/grid.jpg

3 for today, 10 for the weekend.

https://i.postimg.cc/SK42xGmG/grid.jpg

got 8 yesterday and very proud! no surprise we both used Carter and Edwin

First sub-10 (6) in weeks. Yes, I still try this almost every day. Kurt Cobain wished he'd been like me, easily amused.

https://i.postimg.cc/PqGr16Dz/grid.jpg