{"id":16656,"date":"2020-07-25T10:22:56","date_gmt":"2020-07-25T14:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16656"},"modified":"2020-07-25T10:25:39","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T14:25:39","slug":"opening-day-starter-trivia-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16656","title":{"rendered":"Opening Day Starter Trivia 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_14527\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/VerlanderJustinHoustonplayoffs-via-sportingnews.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14527\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-14527\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-14527\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/VerlanderJustinHoustonplayoffs-via-sportingnews-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"Verlander makes his 11th career opening day start, tying him for the active lead. Photo via sporting News.\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/VerlanderJustinHoustonplayoffs-via-sportingnews-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/VerlanderJustinHoustonplayoffs-via-sportingnews-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/VerlanderJustinHoustonplayoffs-via-sportingnews-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/VerlanderJustinHoustonplayoffs-via-sportingnews.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-14527\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Verlander makes his 12th career opening day start, putting him in the clear lead. Photo via sporting News.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Every year I update this long-running XLS for this increasingly anachronistic relic of tracking Opening Day Starter honors for teams.\u00a0 But it does make for some good trivia questions.<\/p>\n<p>After this year&#8217;s opening day, which involved few fans and<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Most Opening Day Starts<\/strong>,\u00a0<strong>Active Leaders<\/strong>:\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Justin Verlander<\/strong>\u00a0makes his 12th career Opening day start, double the next closest competitor now.<\/li>\n<li>Next closest are two veterans, each of which who has 8 career opening day starts, neither of which made 2020 opening day starts (<strong>Clayton Kershaw<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>Jon Lester<\/strong>).<\/li>\n<li>Special mention of\u00a0<strong>Felix Hernandez<\/strong>, who is technically active with the Braves but is not on their 40-man roster.\u00a0 He has 11 but seems like a longshot to make another.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Current Leading Consecutive streak<\/strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>3; shared by Verlander,\u00a0<strong>Max Scherzer<\/strong> and\u00a0<strong>Aaron Nola<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Julio Teheran<\/strong> had a streak of 6 broken this year; he signed with the Angels in the off-season<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Number of first-time Opening Day Starters in 2020: 18 of 30<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Soroka, Alcantara, Hendricks, Woodruff, Musgrove, Flaherty, Marquez, May, Paddock, Milone, Eovaldi, Morton, Giolito, Bieber, Boyd, Heaney, Montas, Lynn<\/li>\n<li>This is easily the highest number of 1st time opening day starters since I started tracking this.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Most surprising opening-day starters in 2020:\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Tommy Milone<\/strong> getting the opening day start for Baltimore.\u00a0 Just crazy.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sonny Gray<\/strong> getting his 3rd career opening day start, 5 years after last getting one for Oakland.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Johnny Cueto<\/strong> getting his 5th career opening day start, also 5 years after his last.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Trevor May<\/strong>, who gets a last minute spot start filling in for the injured Kershaw.\u00a0 The rich keep getting richer out in LA; he was more than adequate, quite a showing for a guy who would normally be in AAA yet could clearly make nearly every other rotation in the league.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Historically, here&#8217;s the all-time record holders:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Most Ever Opening day Starts<\/strong>:\u00a0<strong>Tom Seaver<\/strong>\u00a0with 16.\u00a0 Tied for 2nd place with 14 is\u00a0<strong>Jack Morris, Randy Johnson<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>Steve Carlton<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Most Consecutive Opening Day Starts<\/strong>:\u00a0<strong>Jack Morris<\/strong>, all of whom&#8217;s 14 opening day starts were in a row.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Hope you enjoy this useless trivia!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every year I update this long-running XLS for this increasingly anachronistic relic of tracking Opening Day Starter honors for teams.\u00a0 But it does make for some good trivia questions. After this year&#8217;s opening day, which involved few fans and Most Opening Day Starts,\u00a0Active Leaders: Justin Verlander\u00a0makes his 12th career Opening day start, double the next [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2432,2693,4275,2020,4451,426,407,4453,4450,4278,4449,221,1913,44,2912,897,852,4452,1037,4447,2059,4448,3227,34,1301],"class_list":["post-16656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","tag-aaron-nola","tag-andrew-heaney","tag-brandon-woodruff","tag-charlie-morton","tag-chris-paddock","tag-clayton-kershaw","tag-felix-hernandez","tag-frankie-montas","tag-german-marquez","tag-jack-flaherty","tag-joe-musgrove","tag-jon-lester","tag-julio-teheran","tag-justin-verlander","tag-kyle-hendricks","tag-lance-lynn","tag-lucas-giolito","tag-matthew-boyd","tag-max-scherzer","tag-mike-soroka","tag-nathan-eovaldi","tag-sandy-alcantara","tag-shane-bieber","tag-tommy-milone","tag-trevor-may"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16656"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16661,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16656\/revisions\/16661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}