Trivia Thursday! On Intentional Walks?

By popular demand, we’re bringing back Brilliant Reader questions tomorrow! If you have a question, any question, anything at all, just email it along to Ask Joe!

We’re introducing a new feature here at JoeBlogs: Trivia Thursday! I’m not entirely sure how this will go — I’m working with the good folks here to create a more streamlined way to do this — but for now, I think this still will be a lot of fun.

Let’s tentatively say that you get 10 points for every right answer. So post that score out of 50 in the comments! Oh, and you can find detailed answers to the questions in the footnotes (but don’t peek!).

Today’s trivia contest revolves around intentional walks because, yeah, you know how much we love those around here. Let’s do this!

As JoeBlogs readers know — because I write about it all the time — Roger Maris was not intentionally walked a single time in 1961 when he hit 61 home runs. That’s what happens when you have Mickey Mantle hitting behind you.

To the news: I’m a bit surprised that Alex Bregman signed with the Red Sox. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a really good move for the Sawx because they really needed some right-handed power — I’ll talk about their offseason here in a minute — but I’m still not quite sure how the position thing will work.

Obviously, the Red Sox already have a fantastic hitter and famously frightful third baseman in Rafael Devers. The guy has led the league in errors each of the last SEVEN SEASONS — we’ve established that’s a big league record — and no matter how arbitrary errors might be, you don’t want to lead the league every year.

Just as obviously, Bregman is a brilliant defensive third baseman. He won the 2024 Gold Glove and has been a top-level defender for years now.

So the easy answer seems to be: Bregman replaces Devers at third.

But that won’t work easily at all. Where would you move Devers? Boston already has a first baseman they’re excited about in Triston Casas. You can’t move him to the outfield. You could, technically, move him to DH, but are you really moving the 28-year-old soul of your team, who you have signed through 2033, to designated hitter? No. You’re not.

Bregman wanted to come to Boston so badly that he publicly stated his willingness to move to second base. He obviously can do that because he’s a great athlete, but that seemed like an awkward thing to me — not least because superstar prospect Kristian Campbell (Keith Law’s minor-league player of the year!) is a natural second baseman. Campbell, like Bregman, is athletic enough to play somewhere else, so I assume he will.

It just feels like an awful lot of shifting around just to keep Rafael Devers at third base. But I suppose that’s the best idea for now.

OK, time for our next two trivia questions. We’ll come back to the Red Sox in a minute!

And the obvious follow-up:

OK, Red Sox again. Awkwardness aside, I really like how the Red Sox have put themselves back in the game. One of my favorite things in sports is when you look at a team and think: “Wow, how did they get so many good players?” That’s how I felt about the 1999 St. Louis Rams and the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays. One day I just looked at those teams and thought, “Whoa, wait, how did they get Marshall Faulk and Orlando Pace and Kevin Carter and Carl Crawford and Evan Longoria and Scott Kazmir and …”

This year’s Red Sox feel a bit like that to me. It’s not like the Red Sox have been off the radar, but suddenly you do look up, and they’ve got Rafael Devers and Alex Bregman and Garrett Crochet and Walker Bueller and Jarren Duran and Trevor Story and three of the 10 best prospects in baseball and … I know some stuff has to work out, but I could see a scenario where the Red Sox are really good in 2025. That is not something I saw in the last few years. Even in 2021, when they won 92 games and made it to the ALCS, I didn’t think that team was all that good. This team’s got a shot.

Trivia again! On July 1, 1952, the Cleveland Indians and St. Louis Browns played a magnificent 19-inning, four-hour-and-49-minute game. Bob Feller and Satchel Paige pitched on opposite sides in the game — but almost none of it at the same time. Feller started the game for Cleveland and went nine. Satch came into the game in the ninth for St. Louis and pitched the last 10⅔ innings.

The game was tied 2-2 going into the 19th when the Browns scored a run off reliever Lou Brissie. Paige, who had already thrown 10 brilliant shutout innings, went back to the mound in the 19th to get the win. He got the first out and then got two strikes on Cleveland’s Bobby Avila, who then fouled off a couple of pitches and managed to knock a single. Dale Mitchell then hit what looked like a game-ending routine double play ground ball to short, but Avila was running on the pitch and the Browns had to settle for the out at first. Two outs, and up came Al Rosen.

Ol Satch gave up a game-tying double to Rosen. Then Paige intentionally walked Larry Doby — ah, we’re getting close to the trivia question now — and Hank Majeski singled in the game-winning run. Cleveland won 4-3.

I love how sportswriter John Barrington summed it up.

So what does this have to do with our trivia question? That was the third time that Paige intentionally walked Larry Doby in the game. Our question is obvious: Apologies to those of you who think it might be too easy, but you can’t have an intentional walk trivia contest without this one:

All right, and our last question. I asked earlier which pitcher with 3,000 innings had the most intentional walks… but the truth is that relievers, particularly 1970s-1980s relievers, are the kings of the IBB. In 1974, for example, reliever Gene Garber intentionally passed a whopping 24 batters. That’s the single-season record. As those of you who read regularly know, I do not use the adjective “whopping” often.

With that in mind we’ll finish this off with…

1  Marcus Semien hit 45 home runs in 2021 without a single intentional walk. I imagine hitting ahead of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. for much of the year had something to do with that.

2  I was actually stunned to find out that the starting pitcher with the most intentional walks is Greg Maddux with 177. In retrospect, that should not have surprised me at all. I mean Maddux was the professor, the master, and if he had any doubts at all, he’d happily give you first base and work on the next guy.

3  You better believe it makes me happy to tell you that the pitcher with the fewest intentional walks is Zack Greinke! It’s awesome to me that he’s on the opposite spectrum from Maddux because the two have been linked so often. Greinke only intentionally walked 25 batters in his entire career. Is it any wonder why he’s my favorite?

4  Did I get you? Did I trick you? I really hope I did. It’s NOT Barry Bonds. He was intentionally walked four times in a game on four separate occasions, but one guy was intentionally walked FIVE times in a game. That one guy: Chicago’s Andre Dawson, May 22, 1990, against the Cincinnati Reds. In that 16-inning game, Tom Browning IBB’d him twice, Scott Scudder IBB’d him twice, and Tim Birtsas IBB’d him once. Incredibly, Dawson did not score a run in the game. But the last time he was intentionally walked — in the 16th inning — it loaded the bases for Dave Clark who lashed the long single that won the game for the Cubs.

5  The answer is Kent Tekulve with 179 career intentional walks — two more than Greg Maddux, even though he pitched 3,500 fewer innings. Special mention must be given to Dan Quisenberry — he “only” intentionally walked 70 batters so he’s not in the Tekulva stratosphere. But what makes him incredible is that he walked just 162 batters TOTAL in his career. More than 43% of his career walks were intentional. Quiz was awesome.