Sabathia is your current Active leader in Opening Day starts. Photo wiki/flickr chris.ptacek
One of my favorite annual trivia questions amongst my baseball buddies revolves around Opening Day Starters. With another Opening Day in the books, here’s some useless trivia related to Opening Day starters for my readers. I’ve uploaded my little Opening Day Starters spreadsheet to Google Docs and created a link in the “Nationals Arm Race creation” section along the right.
Current Active Leaders in Opening Day Starts
| 10 | Roy Halladay |
| 10 | CC Sabathia |
| 9 | Mark Buehrle |
| 6 | Bartolo Colon |
| 6 | Derek Lowe |
| 6 | Tim Hudson |
| 6 | Felix Hernandez |
| 6 | Justin Verlander |
| 5 | Aaron Harang |
| 5 | Josh Beckett |
| 5 | Jered Weaver |
| 5 | James Shields |
| 4 | Jake Peavy |
| 4 | Barry Zito |
| 4 | Tim Lincecum |
| 4 | Yovani Gallardo |
Those players bolded in the list above had 2013 opening day starts and added to their totals. Roy Halladay‘s difficult spring training cost him his shot at Opening Day and thus CC Sabathia moves into a tie for first. Mark Buehrle has given over the reigns of opening day starter possibly for good, based on his standing in the Toronto rotation (4th starter?).
Felix Hernandez and Justin Verlander have chances to broach the all-time records (see below) based on their ages, their current counts and their new long-term contracts.
Current Active Leader in consecutive Opening Day Starts: Verlander with 6 straight.
Most ever Opening Day Starts all-time: Tom Seaver with 16 in his career.
Most ever Consecutive Opening Day Starts: Hall of Fame lightning rod Jack Morris, who made 14 straight such starts.
Number of first-time opening day starters in 2013: no less than 13 first timers this year, nearly half the league. Some guys got deserved first-time opening day starts (Jeff Samardzija, Matt Cain, and R.A. Dickey), some guys got Opening Day starts mostly out of attrition of other worthy pitchers (Jon Niese, Bud Norris, A.J. Burnett, Vance Worley and Jhoulys Chacin) and some guys are taking over as the new big-dog of their rotations (Brett Anderson, Chris Sale).
Who seems most likely to break Seaver’s Record at this point? Sabathia, who already has 10 opening day starts, is clearly the #1 in New York, is only 32 and still has five years on his current deal. Question is, if he renews past 2017, can he still earn the #1 spot? Meanwhile Hernandez already has 6, just signed a deal that takes him through 2019 with a relatively easy option for 2020. That’s 8 more seasons on his existing 6 opening day starts and he’d only be 34 years of age. He could be the standard holder if he stays healthy and continues to pitch like an ace.
[…] Day” trivia/useless information post. Here was 2015’s version, 2014‘s and 2013. Many of the below links are to Google XLS docs that i’ve updated for 2016 and which are […]
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