Moving away from the win category, today’s Sporcle visits another venerable column on the statline: ERA. I still like to look at a pitcher’s ERA for a quick, general encapsulation of that pitcher’s season. I’ll use FIP, ERA+, BABIP, etc., to put things into a slightly better context, but I find it fun that a stat my grandparents were familiar with still has its uses in today’s game.
Anyway, today’s Sporcle will take a look at starting pitcher ERAs from 1990 forward. To make the cut, the pitcher must have qualified for the ERA title, and logged an ERA of 4 or under. I’ve also excluded 2020 from the list (apologies to Dallas Keuchel) due to the small sample size. That leaves us with 47 entries: how many can you name? Good luck!
Quiz Parameters
- I’ve allotted 10 minutes for completion attempts.
- For hints I’ve provided the season and the ERA.
Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or confound your friends and family:
- The highest ERA+ of the players on this list is 173, in 2014.
- Interestingly, just one player logged an ERA+ lower than 100 (99). That came in 1992.
- The highest FIP from this list was 4.77, nearly a full run higher than the pitcher’s ERA (3.84, in 2008).
All data from stathead.com
47/47 8:11 remaining.
46/47. Got frustrated and gave up with about 5 minutes left when I couldn’t think of
Exactly the same outcome for me. Got 46 within a minute or so and then stared at the screen for 5 minutes before giving up and then groaning when the answer was revealed.
Had it not been for a pretty good game he once threw, I probably wouldn’t have guessed him either.
I got him, but I definitely didn’t remember him having a full season as a respectable starter.
47/47 with 8:02 left. Took me a while to get the last one, not realizing that
I really enjoyed his time here. I always got a kick of how angry Hawk would get when the umpires would squeeze him, and then Hawk would get all fired up when he fooled a hitter with “the laser” (75 mph fastball).
What took me a minute is he always had an ERA just above 4, so I thought one of the relative fireballers
Hough is by far the most admirable knuckleballer the Sox have employed over the past 40 years.
The ones that I tried who weren’t on it were him,
That first guy was the first name I guessed! The name I put in fully knowing it wouldn’t come up but I wanted to get that sickening feeling early on a Saturday was
46/47. Just drew a blank on good old
37 out of 47
I can’t believe I forgot