You may have heard that this past Tuesday, the White Sox debuted their top pitching prospect, whose name starts with an "M" and ends in "ichael Kopech". Terrible joke aside, the weather, unfortunately, gave us just a short taste of what is to come from the young right hander from Texas.
Michael Kopech's debut planted the seed for today's Sporcle, though: how have other White Sox rookie pitchers fared in their debuts? To rank these, I decided to use game score as the metric, so to qualify a starter needed to record a game score of at least 50 (average-ish). That gives us 44 names in White Sox history, dating back to 1908. How many can you name? Good luck (you're gonna need it)!
Quiz Parameters
- I've given you 15 minutes to attempt to complete the list.
- This list counts only those pitchers whose first career appearance was a start that came as a member of the White Sox organization. So if a pitcher made an appearance out of the bullpen, then started later, they won't be on this list. Likewise, if they started a game for a different organization and came to the White Sox later, they also will not be on this list.
- For hints I've provided the date of the game, and the game score the pitcher logged.
Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, or confound your friends and/or family
- The White Sox are 26-18 in starting pitcher debuts with a game score of at least 50.
- Two pitchers on this list have pitched a complete game shutout, one in 1909 (against the St. Louis Browns) and the other in 1928 (against the Philadelphia Athletics).
- The worst game score for a rookie debut with the White Sox --and I remember this game, if not the pitcher-- was a -7 on June 19, 2004 against the Expos, logged by Arnie Munoz. The Sox lost, 17-14.
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All data from baseballreference.com
