TRIVIA 2020

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Hey, trivia guy, we need two more answers.

This gave me much to ponder on my morning walk. Possibility, which I will check after posting--wondering if Bonds/Kent/fluke-season Rich Aurilia were in alignment?

Online version is Thursday night. Register here: https://t.co/HOspy6gXGu pic.twitter.com/lPy66C1Pnp

— Ted Berg (@OGTedBerg) April 19, 2020

see thread for example questions

(xpost) No on Bonds/Kent/Aurilia, at least on Baseball Reference. '29 Yankees, '04 Cardinals...

The St. Louis hint makes me think it's a red-herring, like the Blues or something.

errr Browns

Hey, trivia guy, we need two more answers.

shit, sorry! i thought i had this thread bookmarked, so when it didn't come up i assumed no one cared about the trivia question. OOPS!

you've got 2 of the 4:

1929 Yankees (Ruth, Gehrig, Lazzeri)
2004 Cardinals (Rolen, Edmonds, Pujols)

the other two are much more difficult. i'll give you two clues, once for each:

1) post-war 1940s league champion featuring a top 10 joe posnanski player
2) while mantle and maris were hogging the attention, this team with a pair of slugging outfielders was...also playing (alex trebek i am not)

1) post-war 1940s league champion featuring a top 10 joe posnanski player

evil hint, had to figure this one out through blunt force

and i got the last one, mostly through cheating, but i've never really been good with the early 60s.

None of the Williams-Red Sox, Musial-Cardinals, or Mantle/Maris-Yankees teams check out on Baseball Reference.

those were my first two thoughts

the second one is 1961 but not expressly mantle/maris, as hinted

and only one of the 2 teams passes the threshold in rWAR

Okay, now I get it--'61 Tigers.

Going through Fangraphs is too much work; is the other one a Williams or Musial team?

nope!

it's really hard. it would be astounding if you got this (or anyone else).

all three of the players' first names are three letters long.

and the legendary top 10 player was a 42-year old at the beginning of his MLB career

Ah

Joe/Ken/Lou...?

i'd never even heard of ken keltner

Me neither

1) post-war 1940s league champion featuring a top 10 joe posnanski player

That's what threw me: you don't say so, but I mistakenly assumed the Posnanski guy was one of the three players.

Keltner's probably most famous now for Bill James's Keltner HOF test.

http://www.cooperstowncred.com/statistics-glossary/keltner-list/

the satchel paige clue was kind of evil, sorry

i've never really been good with the early 60s.

same here

I know Ken Keltner bcz he made a defensive play said to have ended DiMag's 56-game hitting streak

On August 20, 1938, as part of a publicity stunt by the Come to Cleveland Committee, Indians' catchers Frankie Pytlak and Hank Helf successfully caught baseballs dropped by Keltner from Cleveland's 708-foot-tall (216 m) Terminal Tower.[3] The 708-foot (216 m) drop broke the 555-foot, 30-year-old record set by Washington Senator catcher Gabby Street at the Washington Monument.[2]

I know that story but forgot KK was part of it

the marlins have thrown six no-hitters

wtf

This is probably already a well-known question, and the answer should be obvious because the wrong answer is too obvious: who was the first major leaguer to hit 66 home runs?

you mean the first to hit 66 home runs in a single season? so...there was sammy sosa in 1998 of course. but is it answer mark mcgwire (who hit 70 that year), if he reached 66 home runs first? or is the trick trick question that it was sammy sosa, if he hit 66th before mcgwire did? i don't remember

^posted from my computer while logrolling down stairs^

sosa held onto 66 for 45 minutes before mcgwire caught him

Yes. I'd completely forgotten that--Sosa had the lead for an hour. (Got that from the ESPN documentary.)

I'd estimate that the HR leaders this year will have less than 23 HRs for the season. Trivia: When is the last time that happened? (Hint: it was a tie)

i think i'm wrong, but is it 1919? my reasoning is that 1920 is the year that babe ruth really broke out in a monstrous way (54 HR?) and the rest of baseball hadn't quite caught up yet. but maybe the year before that?

after that. to clarify, I mean in either league

my revised guess is 1981!

Yeah, the AL leaders only had 21 that year. Strike season, yada yada.

Armas OAK 22
Evans BOS 22
Grich CAL 22
Murray BAL 22

Grich did it in the least appearances with only 325 AB

most HR 60 or fewer games

Player Year Games Team HR

Matt Olson 2017 59 OAK 25
Gary Sánchez 2016 53 NYA 20
Aristides Aquino 2019 56 CIN 19
Rhys Hoskins 2017 50 PHI 18
Troy Glaus 2004 58 ANA 18

Matty Olse! I love that

So which uni numbers have seen the most value in MLB history? Uni numbers, ranked.

(wear 13, cowards)

MORE-> https://t.co/TxU2SrJP1j pic.twitter.com/SDtosahjQm

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) July 16, 2020

why are there 2 points at zero? did someone generate 4 WAR with a uni that said 0.1?

0 and 00 are counted as different numbers

I Want To Believe

https://allthatsinteresting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/eddie-gaedel-jersey.jpg

damn you ottovino

Players to homer in consecutive games for the same team with more than two years between them:

1. Hank Greenberg (1941-45)*
2. Joe DiMaggio (1942-46)*
3. Harry Chiti (1952-55)*
4. Yoenis Céspedes (2018-20)

*Gap was due to military service.

Source: STATS, Inc.

— Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) July 25, 2020

The starting 4 infield of Vlad Guerrero Jr., @doinitBIGgio23, @BoFlows, and @travis_shaw21 consists of all sons of former @MLB players. This is just the 2nd time in big league history this has happened (Van Slyke, Hairston Jr., De Jesus Jr., Gordon on 6/1/12).

h/t: @EliasSports

— MLB Stats (@MLBStats) July 25, 2020

just came across ken reitz, a third baseman who hit .260/.290/.359 over 1300+ games, primarily with the cardinals in the 70s. career bWAR: -3.1

best tidbit is that he was the starting 3B for the NL all-stars in 1980 -- a season in which he was worth -0.6 bWAR -- ahead of ray knight and mike schmidt, who hit .286/.380/.624 with 48 homers that year to win the first of his three MVPs. reitz went 0-for-2 and schmidt never got in the game.

i remember Reitz, and possibly ridiculing my Cardinal fan cousin re his abilities

I'm buying some Sports Illustrateds from a friend to fill gaps; who was the first baseball player on the cover in the '80s?

Minus his big season, .204 lifetime--still pretty decent for a pitcher.

i didn't realize don was such a good hitter! he put together some excellent seasons in 58 and 59 as well, hitting well above league average

Somehow I did know he was really good. .268/.336/.361 for his career, hit .300 or better six times. Sent up to pinch-hit 88 times.

Sent up to pinch-hit 88 times

damn, that's impressive. now i want to know the record for THAT, heh

i saw a mention of jim abbott's no-hitter today and took a look at the arc of his career. i didn't realize quite how good he was at his peak (1991: 18-11 with 2.89 ERA and 5.5 fWAR, 243 IP, and very good in 1992 as well), but also how bad things got in the late 90s. his ERA was 7.48 in 1996 (he went 2-18 for the angels) over 142 IP. i checked, and yes - that is the highest ERA for a pitcher who has thrown 140+ innings in a season since integration

and he was 28 during that season! he retired, took 1997 off to listen to ok computer, and then came back for 2 more seasons before retiring for good at age 31. what happened to him?

there was no coming back again after Kid A

jim abbott listened to treefingers for the first time and, honestly, he hated it. he didn't understand what was even going on and why it was taking so long. but on the third and fourth listen, something changed, and so he retired again

The best he could was good enough

Turned up on my FB feed (from MLB's FB page): the 15 African American pitchers to win 20 games. Here's the link if you want to check yourself (I glanced at the post before trying it myself): https://www.facebook.com/mlb/posts/pfbid02vFMJgGhradC5fUcMLfcen5cSSYQ7TrjdnT5tAwD3SK1C4tH6Kq7PefRAaN8Bi6w4l.

Stealing this from FB: of the 33 players with 3,000 hits, which five never had a 200-hit season?

Answer: Anson, Yaz, Murray, Winfield, Henderson.

ted williams?

still seems crazy tho

oh shit ted didn't even get to 3000 hits; he sucked

Nice question, I only got two right (the first and fourth you listed).

Impressed that you got the first one, one I never would have gotten. I saw the answers concurrent with the question, so didn't get to try it. I think I might have gotten the last three with enough thought--last two for sure--but never would have guessed Yaz, who I would have just assumed got 200 hits in '67. Pretty sure I knew Williams wasn't a 3,000 hit guy because of the two Ws, walks and wars.

Who made the last out in Johnny Vander Meer's second no-hitter? (One or two of you may have seen my FB comment--don't answer.)

(Needless to say, someone famous.)

BR Walk-off asking the real questions

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_pxCAwXAAA-uUr?format=jpg&name=medium
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_pxCAYXgAAseEK?format=jpg&name=medium
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_pxCAyXYAACB3J?format=jpg&name=medium
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_pxCAWXoAAtK8o?format=jpg&name=medium

I must have known this long ago and forgot: Randy Moffitt, first-round pick of the Giants in 1970 who went on to have a decent career splitting the closer job with Gary Lavelle for a few years (both played for the Jays, too), is Billy Jean King's brother. Still alive.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of this--lifted from FB--but: who was the only player to play alongside Vlad Guerrero Sr., Craig Biggio, and Dante Bichette?

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/v/veresda01.shtml