Verlander makes his 12th career opening day start, putting him in the clear lead. Photo via sporting News.
Every year I update this long-running XLS for this increasingly anachronistic relic of tracking Opening Day Starter honors for teams. But it does make for some good trivia questions.
After this year’s opening day, which involved few fans and
- Most Opening Day Starts, Active Leaders:
- Justin Verlander makes his 12th career Opening day start, double the next closest competitor now.
- Next closest are two veterans, each of which who has 8 career opening day starts, neither of which made 2020 opening day starts (Clayton Kershaw and Jon Lester).
- Special mention of Felix Hernandez, who is technically active with the Braves but is not on their 40-man roster. He has 11 but seems like a longshot to make another.
- Current Leading Consecutive streak:
- 3; shared by Verlander, Max Scherzer and Aaron Nola
- Julio Teheran had a streak of 6 broken this year; he signed with the Angels in the off-season
- Number of first-time Opening Day Starters in 2020: 18 of 30
- Soroka, Alcantara, Hendricks, Woodruff, Musgrove, Flaherty, Marquez, May, Paddock, Milone, Eovaldi, Morton, Giolito, Bieber, Boyd, Heaney, Montas, Lynn
- This is easily the highest number of 1st time opening day starters since I started tracking this.
- Most surprising opening-day starters in 2020:
- Tommy Milone getting the opening day start for Baltimore. Just crazy.
- Sonny Gray getting his 3rd career opening day start, 5 years after last getting one for Oakland.
- Johnny Cueto getting his 5th career opening day start, also 5 years after his last.
- Trevor May, who gets a last minute spot start filling in for the injured Kershaw. 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.
Historically, here’s the all-time record holders:
- Most Ever Opening day Starts: Tom Seaver with 16. Tied for 2nd place with 14 is Jack Morris, Randy Johnson and Steve Carlton
- Most Consecutive Opening Day Starts: Jack Morris, all of whom’s 14 opening day starts were in a row.
Hope you enjoy this useless trivia!