{"id":18416,"date":"2024-03-29T14:37:41","date_gmt":"2024-03-29T18:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=18416"},"modified":"2024-03-29T14:37:42","modified_gmt":"2024-03-29T18:37:42","slug":"opening-day-starting-pitchers-trivia-for-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=18416","title":{"rendered":"Opening Day Starting Pitchers Trivia for 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Gray-Josiah-newnat-washpost-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Gray-Josiah-newnat-washpost-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-17248\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Gray-Josiah-newnat-washpost-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Gray-Josiah-newnat-washpost-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Gray-Josiah-newnat-washpost-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Gray-Josiah-newnat-washpost-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Gray-Josiah-newnat-washpost-2048x1365.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Grey gets the opening day nod for the Nats in 2024.  Photo via WP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I have somewhat of an obsession with Opening Day Starters, and have tracked them on a spreadsheet for, well, for a long time.  20 plus years.  I also love Opening Day Starter Trivia, which we&#8217;ll cover here in a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that the 2024 Opening Day is past us, and I&#8217;ve updated the XLS for this year&#8217;s starters and done some housecleaning of now-retired starters, here&#8217;s some useless Opening day starter trivia for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/1Mv8gLgJOuJHEAf_pXNwPWGCNRL4RnYEyulH6rxMuudA\/edit?usp=sharing\">My Opening Day Starter XLS is uploaded here to Google Sheets.<\/a>  It is also worth noting that Baseball Reference of course maintains similar information.  Here for example is the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/teams\/WSN\/opening.shtml\">canonical opening day list of lineups<\/a> (pitchers and players) for the Washington Nationals franchise.  And here&#8217;s the list of all <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/leagues\/majors\/2024-opening-day-rosters.shtml\">30 teams&#8217; opening day lineups for the 2024 season<\/a>, with similar data for all past seasons).  I can&#8217;t quite find a similar resource to just the starters across all 30 teams, but I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;s there somewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ok, that being said, here&#8217;s some useless trivia related to Opening Day Starters:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>First time Opening Day Starters for 2024<\/strong>: 14 of the 30, including our own <strong>Josiah Grey<\/strong> who takes over for Corbin, who had done the past couple.  This number is down from last year&#8217;s 9 first timers, which was the lowest I had on record going back a decade.  This number was artificially inflated a bit over what was expected due to spring training injuries to presumed opening day starters for teams like <strong>Aaron Nola, Gerrit Cole<\/strong>, and <strong>Sandy Alcantara<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Current active Leader of Opening Day Starts<\/strong>: <strong>Justin Verlander<\/strong>, with 12.  He did 9 in Detroit, then another 3 in Houston.  Others in the conversation are <strong>Kershaw <\/strong>(9), <strong>Scherzer <\/strong>(7), <strong>Julio Teheran<\/strong> (6), and <strong>Nola <\/strong>with 6 (see next)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Current Active Consecutive streak<\/strong>: <strong>Bieber <\/strong>in Cleveland with 5 consecutive opening day starts.  <strong>Nola <\/strong>was the previous holder at 6 straight.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Current Leader of Consecutive Opening Day Starts<\/strong>: both Verlander and Kershaw at one point made 7 straight opening day starts for their teams, and are the current leaders in that category.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Historical records:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Most Opening Day Starts in History<\/strong>: <strong>Tom Seaver<\/strong> (16).\u00a0 Tied for 2nd place with 14 is <strong>Jack Morris, Randy Johnson, Steve Carlton, Walter Johnson <\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Most Consecutive Opening Day Starts in  History<\/strong> <strong>Jack Morris<\/strong>; all 14 of his starts were in a row, Mr. Durability.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Lastly, here&#8217;s some interesting team observations<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Washington went a decade with just two different pitchers (Scherzer or Strasburg) doing the duty.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Texas, your defending WS champs: 8 different opening day starters in the last 8 years.  And it&#8217;s even crazier than that: They&#8217;ve had 15 different opening day starters in the last 16 seasons, dating to 2009!  Only one guy has repeated: Cole Hamels in 2016 and 2018.  That&#8217;s amazing, that Texas basically hasn&#8217;t had a long-term Ace on their staff for nearly 2 decades.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Los Angeles Dodgers, despite being probably the league&#8217;s best team over the past decade or so, has had 6 different guys make their last 6 opening day starts, them the least consistent of any team.  Interesting.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Other teams who have not really been able to find a consistent starter: Cincinnati: 5 straight different opening day starters.  NY Mets: 4 straight different opening day starters.  Baltimore: 8 different starters in the last 9 years.  Tampa: 6 new in last 7 years.  Angels: 7 new in last 8 years.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have somewhat of an obsession with Opening Day Starters, and have tracked them on a spreadsheet for, well, for a long time. 20 plus years. I also love Opening Day Starter Trivia, which we&#8217;ll cover here in a moment. Now that the 2024 Opening Day is past us, and I&#8217;ve updated the XLS for [&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":[],"class_list":["post-18416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18416","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=18416"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18419,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18416\/revisions\/18419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}