Sporcle Saturday: Happy trails, Tim Anderson
Good morning!
With news coming the other day of the White Sox’ decision to decline Tim Anderson’s option, the major league club now adds shortstop to its list of needs over the offseason. Anderson was always an interesting guy to watch; not only was he easy to root for as someone who overcame a variety of obstacles and heartbreaking situations: you never knew what sort of baseball feat he’d pull off on a game-to-game basis.
But for the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Anderson almost certainly would have logged three consecutive seasons of 4 Wins Above Replacement or better. The last time a Sox shortstop accomplished that? 1939-1941. (There have been multiple back-to-back seasons, but the three-peat has been difficult to achieve)
Today’s Sporcle will test you on other 4+ WAR seasons by Sox shortstops. In all, there are 31 player-seasons. How many can you name? Good luck!
Quiz Parameters
- I’ve allotted just seven minutes for completion attempts, since there are a variety of repeats on this list.
- For hints, I’ve provided the season and the WAR.
Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or confound your friends and family:
- The average triple-slash of the players on this list: .292/.367/.499
- No player has hit more than 28 home runs on this list, while three players tallied zero.
- Just one player on this list went over the 200-hit mark: 204, in 1936.
All data from stathead.com
Author
30/31. Got those in less than a minute, but had no clue on the 1909 guy.
Cosigned, every word. I looked up the 1909 guy, he did some notable things with the other Sox.
I didn’t get him or, embarrassingly, the guy with the highest WAR on the list. I remember having a conversation about him fairly recently, but couldn’t recall his name. I got everyone else, though.
Any week I tie roke and asinwreck is a much-better-than-usual week for me. The fact this quiz was almost all recent players or hall-of-famers helped.
same
Same. It took me a long time to come up with the other early 1900s SS, was hoping it would cover all of them!
Wouldn’t have gotten 1909 if I had an extra hour to think
I’ve always been pretty happy to have forced myself to learn about the Sox from 1917-1923 but still have that ‘1st gen Good Sox’ blind spot. So that one guy here who fills up 5 spots…live and learn. 23/31
Kinda sad that I know absolutely nothing about the top guy on this list.
just looked up the trade for Aparicio. We actually got a good return on that one
I agree with @RayHerbert about the pretty good return.
After 1962, Sox traded Aparicio (along with Al Smith) to the Orioles , the return was Hansen, Pete Ward, Dave Nicholson, and Hoyt Wilhelm (who was already 40 but gave the Sox 6 good years and taught Wilbur Wood the knuckler).
After 1970, the Sox traded Aparicio to the Red Sox, the return was Luis Alvarado and Mike Andrews. Not a good return.
We had gotten him back in ’67 for Don Buford, Bruce Howard and someone else. That wasn’t too bad a deal either
i commented on him but it seems not to have been posted. He was pretty much the “good field no hit shortstop”. In looking back at trade desoute giving up Aparicio, we got a pretty good return
That season he hit 20 homers and had 73 walks in a pitchers’ park in an extreme pitching era. Plus good D.
I used him on Immaculate Grid the other day.