Sporcle Saturday: RF by innings since 2017
Good morning!
On Tuesday, Jim revisited the 2021 White Sox and their, uh, efforts at signing a player to man right field for the team in 2021. (Spoiler: it didn’t work out) One of the interesting things in that post was a list of players to patrol the 9 spot by innings: in the comments, joewho112 suggested a Sporcle that took a look at innings lead by position (thanks again for the suggestion!).
While listing innings leads by position for just 2021 would likely boil down to trying to guess every player to make an appearance for the team, I thought it might be fun –YMMV on the use of that word– to take a look at who has logged innings in right field since 2017, after they traded Adam Eaton away during the 2016-17 offseason (I’ll likely expand this theme to other positions as well in the coming months; get ready to Remember Some Guys). Given that three of the next five years were rebuilds, I came away a touch surprised that there weren’t more names.
In all, 35 player-seasons have logged time in right field at one point or another over this time, with a few names as repeats. How many can you name? Good luck!
Quiz Parameters
- I’ve allotted 10 minutes for completion attempts.
- For hints, I’ve provided the year and the number of innings for each player.
Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or confound your friends and family:
- The highest OPS logged from any of these players –among meaningful playing time, at least– was .810.
- That same player is responsible for logging the most total bases of the players on this list, 398 over two seasons. The next-highest is 112. Spread over five seasons.
(Photo credit: Zach Bolinger/Icon Sportswire)
All data baseballreference.com
Author
34/35. Even figuring which mediocre utility guys were playing out of position, I still missed the guy who played 31.2 innings in 2019. A pair of names shared by multiple players padded my stats considerably.
Rich Lindberg titled his 1983 history of the team Who’s On Third. This quiz is proof that a book about the post-Sale trade team would be called Who’s In Right.
11 rightfielders in 2021. That’s a pretty good gauge of the ownership’s commitment to winning right there.
28/35. I missed 7 different players, including 2 from this year. Just shows how uninspiring their right field options have been the last 5 years.
32/35, and I wish I could purge almost every one from my memory.
You know how sometimes your brain protects you from memories of traumatic events? I watched a lot of White Sox games in 2019 (just two years ago), and I have no recollection of the leader in RF innings that year, and he was on the list twice! After refreshing my memory by looking at his numbers: thanks, brain.
I remember him just because I thought he had the physical tools to be a plus all-around player, but his swing was just atrocious.
Absolutely. I knew a lot of the 4th OF guys that the Sox trotted out in RF during the rebuilding years but I have no recollection of ever watching that dude despite knowing he was on the team.
2019 has been memory holed
I’m surprised a certain 2019 player played that few innings in RF yet became a 108 fan favourite.
Only 25 correct for me.
RF alone could have been a solid basis for the names on the I Survived The Rebuild penant.