Good morning!
As Josh noted on the most recent episode of the Sox Machine podcast, Colson Montgomery joins some pretty elite company having now hit 41 home runs over his first 141 games (entering Friday evening's contest against the Detroit Tigers).
When looking at the position of shortstop throughout White Sox franchise history, power has been at a premium most seasons: unsurprising, given what has traditionally been asked out of the position across the sport. Even so, to make a quiz out of this, numbers were massaged to get a representative sample; one of the cutoffs was originally going to be 10 home runs in a season, but that proved to provide too few player seasons. Thus the number was reduced to 5, all while Montgomery has hit at least 20 dingers in back-to-back seasons, while not having yet played a full 162!
The quiz parameters below will lay out who qualified, but in all there are 44 player-seasons. How many can you name? Good luck!
Quiz Parameters
- To qualify, a player must have (deep breath): hit at least five home runs for the White Sox in the same season, played at least 70 games, and 70% of those games, must have been at shortstop. Whew.
- I've allotted 10 minutes for completion attempts.
- For hints, I've provided the year and the number of home runs.
Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or confound your friends and family:
- The last player to log 100 or more RBI in a season using the above parameters was in 1936 (128); that player also led the AL in batting average: .388.
- Speed, part I: the most stolen bases on this list is 56 (1959).
- Speed part II: the most triples is 12 (1929).
All data from stathead.com
