As the baseball world awaits the results of the Bryce Harper/Manny Machado sweepstakes, the White Sox still have some thinking to do regarding their center field situation.
Happily, left field seems as though it will be set for the 2019 season, at least once Eloy Jimenez magically improves his defense during the first two weeks of the season. Jimenez, from an offensive perspective, looks set to contribute right away, and I think all Sox fans are hopeful that he can break a few White Sox rookie records in the process.
Today's Sporcle will examine past successes in the rookie White Sox outfielder department. While there are a host of ways to measure success --I ran Baseball Reference's Play Index on WAR, oWAR, home runs, OBP, and batting average-- I decided to use a minimum of 100 hits as the defining metric, because I felt it gave some measure of consistent success for rookie hitters. Feel free to eviscerate my choice in the comments. There are 27 names total: how many can you name? Good luck!
Quiz Parameters
- I've allotted 10 minutes for completion attempts.
- To qualify, the player must have kept his rookie status over the course of the season, played at least 81 games (80% of which were in some combination of LF/CF/RF), and logged at least 100 hits.
- For hints, I've provided the season and the number of hits.
Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or confound your friends and family:
- 7 of the players on this list (26%) received Rookie of the Year consideration.
- 2 of those won the award (1966 and 1983).
- The most hits by a rookie outfielder in MLB history was 242, set by Ichiro in 2001. (Shoeless Joe Jackson was second, with 233 for Cleveland in 1911)
All data from baseballreference.com
