Sporcle Saturday: Hit streaks

In addition to Jose Abreu’s steady climb up the franchise home run leaderboard, he also gained altitude on a different list: the number of games in a row in which he logged at least one hit. His 22nd game in a row with at least one hit was achieved in Pittsburgh on Wednesday night, and it placed him tied for 8th-most in franchise history. That’s also the longest such streak in MLB this year, so all-in-all Abreu seems to be making up for the other 100 games we’ve missed out on in this pandemic-shortened 60 game sprint. While he didn’t get a hit in last night’s game, 22 in a row ain’t too bad a consolation prize.

Today’s Sporcle will take a look at some of the other hit streaks which have occurred in franchise history. To make the cut, a player must have logged a hit streak of at least 18 games, and it needs to have come all in a single season. That gives us 55 entries: how many can you name? Good luck!

Quiz Parameters

  • I’ve allotted 10 minutes for completion attempts.
  • For hints, I’ve provided the year, the position of the player, and the number of games in the hit streak.

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

  • The average triple slash of the players on this list: .393/.452/.578
  • Of the players on this list, Abreu is the leader in the clubhouse with the most home runs at 10 during this current hit streak.
  • The only defensive position (aside from pitcher) not represented on this list is catcher. A.J. Pierzynski holds the top spot, though, with a 16-game hit streak in 2008.
  • In case you’re curious, Gary Peters holds the franchise hit streak record for pitchers. In 1966 he had a hit 11 games in a row, not too shabby. Speaking of which, his 1966 season was pretty darned good: he led the league with a 1.98 ERA (204 IP), .982 WHIP, and 160 ERA+. He logged 5.3 WAR that season finishing in 2nd behind Earl Wilson (who had 5.9 WAR). Sandy Koufax (deservedly) won the Cy Young that year (through 1966 it was just one pitcher, not both leagues). Had there been an NL and AL Cy Young, Jim Kaat likely would have won it for the AL anyway, since he logged 25 wins.

Direct link here

All data from stathead.com

(Jose Abreu portrait by Carl Skanberg)

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asinwreck

50/55. My misses were from 1929, 1931, 1943, 1951, and 1953, which is more an indication that offensively accomplished players fashion hit streaks of this length rather than me actually knowing that these guys had hitting streaks.

Great factoid on Gary Peters!

KenWo4LiFe

God dammit Boomer beat me 41-40 and I left 3 names on the table. Not going to be able to sleep for a week.

Spoiler
Radcliffe, sheeley, falk,

roke1960

42/55. Sadly, missed one from 1997.

ParisSox

I could see Madrigal making his way up this list several times in his career.

carbiner

Complete non sequitor but Jose Valentin was worth $40 million over the last three years of his contract on the White Sox and made just $15 mil thanks not only to his solid bat but suberb defense with 14.8, 18.1, and 12.4 defensive runs (?) on fangraphs and 1.0, 1.8, and 0.8 defensive WAR on b-ref; moustache above replacement off the charts.

Right Size Wrong Shape

Pretty amazing that they won the World Series after Lee, Ordonez and Valentin left, and pretty much without Thomas.