Sporcle Saturday: White Sox starting pitchers of the ’60s
Good morning!
Last week, the White Sox community learned of the passing of rotation stalwart of the 1960s, Gary Peters. As Josh and Jim noted on Monday’s podcast, if you have a moment, it’s worth checking out his terrific SABR biography.
Peters logged 216 starts for the White Sox during the 1960s (second-most over that span) despite not starting a game for the franchise until May 6, 1963. And boy, what a start: 8 IP, 4 hits, 4 strikeouts against 1 walk, and a home run on offense, to boot! The AP presser was relatively blasé in its recounting:
Gary Peters, making his first major league pitching start for Chicago, hit a homer and beat the Kansas City Athletics 5-1. He had ninth-inning help from Jim Brosnan, newly acquired from Cincinnati.
The New York Times, May 7, 1963 (AP)
Of the newspaper accounts I could find that had some editorializing from the standard AP/UPI gamer, most focused on the controversy surrounding Jim Brosnan, the OG of the Ball Four diary genre.
At any rate, I didn’t want Peters’ passing to go unnoticed in this weekly post: thus, today’s Sporcle will focus on those starting pitchers who made at least 10 starts for the White Sox over the course of the 1960 through 1969 seasons. With that 10 start minimum, that gives us 26 names: how many can you get? Good luck!
Quiz Parameters
- I’ve allotted 10 minutes for completion attempts.
- For hints, I’ve provided the year(s) the pitcher was on the team, and their number of games started.
Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or confound your friends and family:
- The average ERA of the starting pitchers on this list is 3.44…
- …which amounts to average ERA+ of 104, and a FIP of 3.69.
- Peters, on his own, averaged a 2.92 ERA, FIP of 3.05, and an ERA+ of 115.
All data from stathead.com. Gamer from Historical New York Times database.
Author
Perfect quiz for the week, Ted. I got 14/26 and I left three names on the table that I really should have remembered. (One is a Hall of Famer, though not in baseball.) Biggest surprise was
Glad you enjoyed it! Your guy in question made 8 starts in 1960, so just missed my arbitrary cutoff. Had I gone into the late-50s, he certainly would have qualified!
16/26, though I had help from asinwreck’s Hall of Fame comment! My most obscure name was the guy from 1969 who died in the offseason. What a great quiz, Ted! There’s some names I haven’t thought about in years!
Thanks, Roke!
Well only 8/26,and I was dead sure that the regulars here would get near perfect scores on a quiz like this, so I take unearned solace in that not being quite right. The big ones at the the top I got right away and a couple by checking to see if any of the ’59 squad drifted into the 60’s. But the late 60’s were evidently woeful.
I thought I might do better, but the names that I missed were all pretty obscure. I was born in 1960, so I don’t really remember anything before about 1966.
Nostalgic quiz for me. Missed (among others) fhe AL ERA leader from 1960, and the truly tragic figure from ‘69.
This was fun because throughout the 60’s White Sox pitching was their strength.
It was so solid in 64 and 65 that they only needed 12 pitchers to get through the season. That’s amazing.
17 – thought id do better but the names i missed are pretty obscure so i’m not mad. Had tip to my dad who told me stories about all the 17 i got.