trivia quiz

[mjl]

A couple other notes from my research doing this:

* The Brewers have quite an assortment of mediocre pitchers who had a good season. Among the top 15 seasons are Chris Bosio, Doug Davis, Ben McDonald, Chris Capuano, Moose Haas, and Jaime Navarro.
* Two years ago, Kevin Brown would have led for three teams, but Kershaw 2014 and 2015 passed him.
* The second-best Pirates pitching season was Rick Reuschel, which I would not have come up with, so good job whoever suggested him.
* Ubaldo had two pretty good years in Colorado, but everything after him is full of Cooks and Jenningses and Astacios. Astacio has the 5th and 10th best seasons and both seasons he had an ERA over 5.
* Clemens' best year in New York was only slightly worse than Melido Perez's best year there.
* In the list of contrived records that will never be broken, Sammy Sosa's three years of having 60+ home runs and not leading the league in any of them will probably hold up for a while.
* I don't remember watching Cal Ripken play too well; was he really one of the greatest defensive shortstops of all time? According to Fangraphs defensive stats, he has five of the top 30 fielding seasons of the last 35 years, including two better than Andrelton Simmons' best.

[rhd]

* I don't remember watching Cal Ripken play too well; was he really one of the greatest defensive shortstops of all time? According to Fangraphs defensive stats, he has five of the top 30 fielding seasons of the last 35 years, including two better than Andrelton Simmons' best.

The things that set Ripken apart were his preparation, great anticipation and footwork. And he really studied hitters. And noone put in more time in preparation. They say he was usually the first one to the ballpark and often the last to leave. And he had a very strong arm. He was slow but he was still able to get to balls that shouldnt have been able to because he often knew (or guessed correctly) where the ball was going to be hit before the batter even hit it. He spent a ton of time perfecting his footwork which enabled him to get throws off more quickly. Being in Maryland, I watched a lot of his games and he wasnt flashy at all and unless you knew the background info behind him it was hard to believe he was as good as he was. Reminded me a lot of Brooks Robinson. It would be very interesting to have seen what the StatCast data would have said about his fielding.

[ironfist]

It's weird, the post below this is mine, and i started my post before this one posted. Just being at work cost me some right answers. How the hell did we both come up with Nevin?

The clue was that it was "hard" so that was the only guy I could think of that was obscure and had a good year for the Pads. I thought of Caminiti later but I wasn't able to post at the time and didn't know if he was hard enough.