Sporcle Saturday: Hot corner guys
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
61/89. The late 70s and early 80’s killed me.
Sox third basemen of that era did that to a lot of people.
(And I’m really glad this wasn’t a comment on a shortstop sporcle, given the inevitable and awful Alan Bannister joke to be made.)
72/89. Not my best performance but I got some randos.
Boomer got 65. Chalk up another one for the bad guy! (Although his wife just had a baby and he took it while holding the new born in the hospital) but regardless… Uncle KenWo aka the Unkster took the W! Lol
81/89 before I ran out of time. A good way to approach this one is to think of Sox infielders IN GENERAL, rather than focusing on guys who are everyday third basemen. This is truly the March of the Utility Infielders.
64/89. I should have had some more because I remember almost all of the names. I was proud that I remembered that the Sox had the original A-Rod play for them at the end of his career.
73/89. Boy there are a lot below average players in there.
I can’t believe some of the names that had multiple season of eligibility for this list earlier in this decade.
52/89. Most of the ones I missed I barely remember or never heard of in the first place.