Sporcle Saturday: White Sox catchers since 1980

Yasmani Grandal (Portrait by Carl Skanberg)

Well, it finally happened: the White Sox signed Jonathon Lucroy to a minor league deal on Thursday, fulfilling the fervent wishes of our own Josh Nelson. Sure, a few years too late, but who’s counting time these days, anyway? At any rate, James Fegan of The Athletic also reported that the Sox are taking on catching guru Jerry Narron, giving the team its first dedicated MLB catching coach and joining the ranks of the likes of the Padres, Yankees, and Braves in so doing.

As Jim noted, perhaps Narron can rehabilitate Lucroy, but the likelier scenario is that the improvement is focused more on Zack Collins. By the way, happy 26th birthday, Zack. With all these catcher-y things happening at the moment, today’s Sporcle will also focus on the catching position. Since 1980, a variety of names have appeared with the White Sox (playing time caveats below in the parameters section): how many can you name? Good luck!

Quiz Parameters

  • At first blush, it’ll seem a bit of a strange list: that’s because I set the qualification cutoff to look at percent of playing time at the position rather than number of games caught. To qualify, a catcher must have appeared in at least 70% of his games in a season at that position.
  • I’ve allotted 15 minutes for completion attempts.
  • I’ve provided the tenure and games caught as hints. Tenure does not necessarily reflect if a player left the team and returned in a later season.

Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or confound your friends and family:

  • Going merely by any player that has appeared in a game at catcher for the White Sox, there are 74 entries.
  • Expand that to franchise history, and the number increases to 196 names.
  • If I made you guess who has made the most appearances at catcher in franchise history, you’d most likely get it: Ray Schalk, with 1757 games is the leader.

Direct link here

All data from stathead.com

(Portrait by Carl Skanberg)

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asinwreck

56/64. I finally finally finally, thanks to Ted’s persistence with including him in multiple Sporcles, got

a guy who is more famous for his post-playing career
Bob Melvin
.

I know the rules disqualify him, but I will continue to guess

legendary Sox catcher
Matt Merullo
on these quizzes. Frank Thomas thanked him in his Hall of Fame speech!

roke1960

32/64. That was a humbling experience!

KenWo4LiFe

51/64. Boomer w 41. Made up for last weeks debacle.

Michael Kenny

26/64. A bit bummed I didn’t get the avocado guy.

I spent way too much time trying to remember the name

Spoiler
Rick Wrona
. Also forgot
Spoiler
Don Slaught
ever played for the Sox.

MSquared

Only came up with 50, but didn’t Mike Squires catch a couple of games in 1980 with his modified mitt??

John SF

Apparently I still cannot spell two of our top five catchers.

Lorenzo Barcelo

No Matt Merullo?