This past Tuesday, Josh took a deep dive into White Sox third basemen. As he noted, Yoan Moncada is posting one of the best offensive seasons in franchise history, let alone recent memory.
Frequent all-world Sporcle grandmaster asinwreck noted in the comments that Rich Lindberg's history of the franchise, Who's on Third?, is aptly named: the Sox truly have struggled to consistently field productive third basemen. And indeed, when I pulled the list for today's post, it's a truly sad list. Be warned now: should you choose to participate in the Sporcle you may get triggered by some names.
I decided to spare folks the chore of dredging up older names and chose to focus on 1970 to the present: that's enough painful memories for one sitting. That gives 89 instances: how many can you name? Good luck!
Quiz Parameters
- To qualify, a player must have logged at least 30 games at third base.
- I've allotted 10 minutes for completion attempts.
Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or confound your friends and family:
- By split alone (so only games played at third base), Ralph Hodgin's 1944 season with an OPS+ of 154 is the best in franchise history. Granted that that was during wartime years, and only covered 45 games, then as Josh noted, Pete Ward takes the cake with a 139 OPS+ (or 134 overall).
- The average triple slash of players on this list (1970-present): .249/.312/.395.
- In total, 87 different players have started 30 or more games at third base in a season in franchise history.
All data from baseballreference.com
