Sporcle Saturday: White Sox first round draft picks

When the White Sox selected Nick Madrigal with the number 4 overall pick in the MLB draft this past Monday, the diminutive infielder from Oregon State became the 72nd first round pick for the White Sox in franchise history. And that, my friends, gets us to the heart of today’s Sporcle: of those 72 names, how many can you name? Good luck!

Quiz Parameters

  • As always, just last names accepted, in addition to both first and last.
  • You’ll have 15 minutes to attempt completion.
  • For hints, I’ve provided the year and the pick number.

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

  • The White Sox have picked first overall just twice in their history: 1971 and 1977.
  • By career bWAR, the top-five for the Sox: 73.7, 56, 38.5, 33.5, 28.9.
  • 46 of the 70 names on this list reached the majors, good for a 63% success rate; averaging out all 30 MLB teams, the league-wide success rate on first-rounders is 61.8%.

Direct link here
All data from baseballreference.com

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KenWo4LiFe

34/72. Not my wheelhouse. 

Flitcraft

Oh holy cats. Brutal by me, brutal by mgmt. 25/72.

Quiz might have been at least slightly less a charnel house if you had included position listed when drafted (2B, LHP, etc.) instead of selection number, but only slightly less, approx. neck high in carnage as opposed to chin high.

Still fun, Ted, and it all made perfect sense to me once the answers were revealed.

asinwreck

61/72, with my weakest showings being the 60s picks who didn’t pan out and some of the least successful Schueler-era selections.

This Sporacle really makes one appreciate Larry Himes.

Greg Nix

Impressive!

33/72 for me. Got all the first picks going back to 2002, but missed a couple of compensation picks (

Spoiler
Phegley
!). Should have gotten
Spoiler
Honel
and
Spoiler
Wells
, but otherwise I’m pretty happy with that result.

Here’s one way to tell my age: I missed 5 in the first column (2001-2018), 13 in the second column (1987-2000) and 21 in the third column (1965-1986).

asinwreck

The second guy in your list was an Illinois HS product and probably the single biggest reason the Sox avoided HS pitchers in favor of low-ceiling college soft-tossers like, well, much of the mid-aughts picks.
I read Baseball America voraciously in the 80s, which helped my score this week because a lot of those guys pre-Himes did not work out. (My favorite odd move of the Hemond era was promoting

Spoiler
Ricky Seilheimer
to the majors when he was still a teenager. Activating
Spoiler
Minnie Minoso
that year made more sense.)

fustercluck

25, with maybe another handful I should’ve guessed. Completely at peace with my place in the universe.

jorgefabregas

23, but most importantly I want to note that I remembered

Spoiler
Royce Ring

31. I was feeling good about myself until I saw some of the names I left on the table. I also knew there was a good Ranger on the list, so I tried Harrah and Bell, but forgot about

Spoiler
Buechele
(probably would have misspelled it anyway).

Trooper Galactus

24/72. Yuck. Never even heard of most of these clowns.