The 2018 Arizona Diamondbacks: Name recognition

A couple of weeks ago, we posted a Sporcle which invited you to test your powers of recall and name as many of the 49 players to have pulled on the Sedona Red in the season just gone. 135 of you stepped up to the plate: only three of you managed to recall every single man (and I’m not convinced that result could be reproduced under laboratory conditions, shall we say1). At the other end of the spectrum, eight of you named seven or fewer. I would like to think that the doorbell rang, or a fight broke out between your pets, something along those lines to distract you from the task at hand. Because if you couldn’t even name one starting line-up from last season... The median score (half above, half below) was 33.

But what I found particularly interesting was the percentage scores for each Diamondback, with a VERY broad range. The most well-known player scored a point on all but four contestants’ entries [and for those four, again, I am hoping it was a cat-fight which distracted you!]. The least well-known was a swing and a miss for 115 out of the 135 players who took part. Here are the full rankings, with for each player, the percentage of people who correctly identified them as a member of the 2018 Diamondbacks

1. Paul Goldschmidt - 96.3%
2. David Peralta - 95.6%
3. Ketel Marte - 94.1%
4. A.J. Pollock - 91.9%
5. Nick Ahmed - 91.1%
6. Zack Greinke - 91.1%
7. Jake Lamb - 90.4%
8. Patrick Corbin - 88.1%
9. Archie Bradley - 88.1%
10. Robbie Ray - 87.4%
11. Daniel Descalso - 83.7%
12. Jeff Mathis - 83.7%
13. John Ryan Murphy - 83%
14. Alex Avila - 82.2%
15. Brad Boxberger - 82.2%
16. Zack Godley - 81.5%
17. Taijuan Walker - 81.5%
18. Christian Walker - 80.7%
19. Eduardo Escobar - 80%
20. Chris Owings - 77%
21. Yoshihisa Hirano - 73.3%
22. Matt Koch - 71.1%
23. Jarrod Dyson - 70.4%
24. Jon Jay - 68.9%
25. Andrew Chafin - 65.2%
26. Shelby Miller - 60.7%
27. Clay Buchholz - 60%
28. Socrates Brito - 59.3%
29. Jimmie Sherfy - 57.8%
30. T.J. McFarland - 56.3%
31. Brad Ziegler - 55.6%
32. Ildemaro Vargas - 54.1%
33. Jake Diekman - 51.9%
34. Silvino Bracho - 48.9%
35. Steven Souza Jr. - 45.2%
36. Yoan Lopez - 45.2%
37. Jake Barrett - 43%
38. Matt Andriese - 38.5%
39. Chris Stewart - 37.8%
40. Randall Delgado - 37.8%
41. Braden Shipley - 34.1%
42. Jorge De La Rosa - 32.6%
43. Patrick Kivlehan - 29.6%
44. Fernando Salas - 27.4%
45. Deven Marrero - 24.4%
46. Kris Medlen - 23.7%
47. Kristopher Negron - 18.5%
48. Troy Scribner - 17.8%
49. Joey Krehbiel - 14.8%

There were a number of rankings which I’d consider surprises. I know Steven Souza wasn’t on the team MUCH this year, but seeing him below Jake Diekman was unexpected. Maybe that’s just me though, and given the results, I have to defer to Songbird!

At the high end, I note the tight clustering of all three of our catchers - well, MAIN catchers, with all respect due to Chris Stewart... :) They occupied consecutive slots from #12-14, and it seems a bit odd for John Ryan Murphy to finish ahead of Zack Godley, Chris Owings and Yoshihisa Hirano.