A new baseball season is upon us (at least here in North America).
To get into the swing of things, since 1918, what do these players (and only these players) have in common?
Congratulations to John Autin, who solved the quiz in (gulp!) 7 hours, 53 minutes. The quiz answer is that these 7 players are the only non-pitchers who, since 1918, have appeared in 5 or more opening day games, but never as a starter.
Sadly, John Vander Wal started on opening day in 2003 for the Brewers, and hit cleanup. Ouch, painful times.
Doug: I think there is a way, without guesswork, to find players who never had an opening day start but did appear as a sub. As stated in your post #21 run step 1, then repeat the process for guys with most OD appearances as a starter. Then copy and paste each list into an Excel spreadsheet, one directly above the other. Then sort both lists by name and with proper use of the =IF(…) command you can sort out the guys who appeared only as a sub. It’s cumbersome for me to describe but maybe you could figure it… Read more »
Not cheating at all.
1. Go to P-I Batting Game Finder.
2. Select Find Players with Most Matching Games in Multiple Years
3. Select the years of interest and regular season.
4. Select positions of interest (or all)
5. Selected Sub under Starter or Reserve
6. Type a 1 in box for “Team’s first ___ gm”
–Go to the Batting Game Finder –At the top of the page, choose the option that says “Find Players with Most Matching Games in Multiple Years” –In the middle of the page, you can choose from “Starter”, “Sub” or “Either”. Choose “Sub” –At the bottom right, where you can choose “In the team’s first __ game”, insert 1 in the blank. –In order to avoid having relief pitchers (who do count as “Subs”) cluttering your list, in the Batter’s Defensive Postion” section you can click on Non-Pitcher (or, with the same effect, uncheck the Pitcher box) Then when you hit… Read more »
Bingo! Well done, John.
How to find it. For players in this instance, I mean non-pitchers.
– Search for players with most OD appearances as sub. Cut off the list at a convenient point (I chose 5).
– Search for players with most OD appearances of any kind. Prune list to only include number of games in range of the first list (5 to whatever the max of the first list was).
– Find players on both lists and with same number of appearances on both lists.
The first guess was right, just didn’t have the cutoff. It was also a little misleading because this list was really a group of guys who did something the “most often” instead of a group of guys who “were the only to do something”
Also, today Justin Verlander, MVP first place 2011, will throw his first pitch to Jacoby Ellsbury, MVP #2nd place 2011. I don’t feel like checking them all but this must be a first.
I gave in and looked around, the only other 1-2 MVP finish by a pitcher and leadoff batter was 1968, Bob Gibson and Pete Rose. They did not play on opening day.
In 1963 1-2 was Koufax and Dick Groat, they played each other on opening day in ’64 but Groat hit 2nd, so close.
1958 1-2 finishers were Jackie Jensen and Bob Turley who did face each other on opening day in 1959, but Jensen hit 5th.
