With the above game log, Jose Abreu became the 552nd player since 1914 to make his major-league debut as a starter on opening day, and the only one to do so in 2014. That’s 552 out of more than 14,000 major-leaguers who have debuted in the past 101 seasons (and only the eighth of those 552 with a 4-1-2-1 box score line).

The great majority of major-leaguers debut less auspiciously, perhaps called up mid-season to replace an injured or faltering vet, or as one of a number of hopefuls trying to impress in September. Even those who make the big club coming out of spring training will often see their first action a few games into the season, perhaps as a defensive replacement or pinch-runner, or possibly in a pinch-hitting role in a blow-out game. Only a very few debut in the starting lineup on opening day, baseball’s equivalent of being thrown in the deep end to see if you can swim.

After the jump, more on players who begin their careers as opening day starters.

Here’s a chart showing the number of players in each season since 1914 who made their career debut in the starting lineup on opening day. The line which closely follows the pattern of the bars is the same number represented as a percentage of all players making their career debut in that season.

Before expansion, upwards of 5% of debuts would be as an opening day starter, compared to less than 3% over the past 25 years.

In which positions have players most often debuted as an opening day starter? Here’s a chart showing the totals by team and position. The highlighted cells are the teams with the most such players at each position.

Perhaps surprisingly, middle infielders are the preferred positions for players debuting as opening day starters. But, on second thought, that may not be so surprising as teams are probably more likely to be strongly invested in players at positions with talent scarcity. Pitcher and DH are the rarest positions – no pitcher has made his career debut on opening day since 1943, and only Eddie Murray and Bubba Trammell have done so at DH, a position neither player specialized in for his career (though Murray did have that role his entire first season)

Adding together their 3 cities, the Athletics top the list with 38 such players, including their time in Philadelphia when they had the most such players in the pre-expansion era. Minnesota tops the expansion-era teams, with Atlanta and Kansas City having the fewest such players among teams in operation prior to 1993.

One might surmise that weaker teams, with fewer options, would be more likely to resort to the rawest of rookies for their opening day roster. Let’s see if that’s the case.

Certainly, more players have debuted as OD starters on weaker teams than on stronger ones, though the difference is not as large as I would have guessed. The Yankees have bucked the trend, debuting most of their keystone rookies on strong clubs (of course, the Yankees have had comparatively few weak clubs on which rookies could have debuted).

Who are the most notable players to have begun their careers as an opening day starter. Here’s the top 20 by career WAR.

Number 3 on the above list omitted because he is on the list below.

Fairly compelling testimony that an opening day start to a career is a sign of a player of whom a team rightly has high expectations. Twenty out of 552 players (3.6%) with 60 career WAR compares rather favorably to an overall rate of just shy of 1% of the 14,122 players to debut from 1914 to 2013 (137 of those 14,122 compiled 60 career WAR, 98 position players and 39 pitchers).

We saw earlier that the proportion of players to begin a career in recent years as an opening day starter is much less than half of those who did so prior to expansion. Has that increased level of discrimination been borne out by career results? Here’s a table showing proportions of career debuts as OD starters by decade and career WAR level.

The highlighted area from the 1960s to 1980s does indeed show that having smaller pools of careers beginning with an OD start has correlated with larger proportions of those pools achieving higher career WAR. In particular, over half of the retired OD starters who compiled over 75 WAR debuted during those 3 decades.

But, the results from the 1990s (which are complete) fail to impress, while the 2000s results will start looking a bit better once some of these active players have retired.

The increased level of discrimination in which players get to debut as an OD starter can also be seen at the low end of the spectrum. Sixty-two of the 552 players (11%) played just a single season, but only these 10 did so in the expansion era, including just one in the past 25 years.

Finally, which opening day games featured the most starters making a career debut.

The 1930 White Sox (who lost 92 games) and the 1946 Dodgers (who won 96!) each debuted four players in their OD starting lineup. That is also the record for both teams, shared with these games.

It took only two weeks (and a 3 for 32 start) for 29 year-old “Turkey” Gross to go from an opening day start to getting his outright release from the Red Sox organization. But, his triple on opening day ties him with 16 others for the most 3-baggers in a career debut as an OD starter.