Your Saturday Sporcle: An Alphabet of D-backs

This is your final Sporcle of the winter, since next Saturday sees the first meaningful games of Spring Training, and we’ll be otherwise engaged. :) Last week’s was D-backs by country, and proved a bit easier than some, with an average score of 48%. Every one who took part was able to figure out that Randy Johnson was the best US-born Diamondback, but David Peralta, Ketel Marte and Byung-Hyun Kim also scored over 90% recognition. At the other end, the difficult ones were pretty much the ones expected, e.g. Bobby Chouinard being born in the Philippines. But I was somewhat surprised that nobody figured out that Jamie Romak was the team’s best Canadian-born player. #BlameCanada.

For our finale, let’s continue the theme and get alphabetical. Surnames. A to Z: who have been the best players at each letter? It would be interesting to try and construct the best roster, limiting yourself to one player at each letter. Would G be for Greinke, Goldschmidt, Gonzalez or Gallen, for example? But, for now, let’s just concentrate on picking the single best player at each spot. That gives you 25 names to find, since there’s never been one whose surname started with an X. Indeed, the only one even around major-league history is Leovigildo Xiqués, who played in the Negro American League from 1944-47.. You should be able to get at least 13 of the remainder here, to finish your Sporcle off-season on a high!

As usual, last names only are fine, and here’s the link, if the embed below proves troublesome. Feel free to post your biggest swings and misses in the comments.