Trivia -- Inner circle HOFers who never had a statistically terrible season
 

The following 14 players received more than 97% of the BBWAA vote when they were elected to the Hall:

Mariano Rivera
Jeter
Ichiro
Ken Griffey Jr.
Tom Seaver
Nolan Ryan
Cal Ripken Jr.
Ty Cobb
George Brett
Hank Aaron
Tony Gwynn
Randy Johnson
Greg Maddux
Chipper Jones

Name the 5 players from the above list who never had a negative WAR season.

Guessing:
Ichiro
Gwynn
Brett
Aaron
Seaver

Good guesses! You've got 2 out of the 5. I'll wait to see if others guess before revealing who you got right.

I'll go with these:

Aaron
Gwynn
Cobb
Rivera
Ripken

Gwynn
Cobb
Chipper
Brett
Rivera

Ichiro probably has the MOST negative WAR seasons on that list.

RIVERA
COBB
AARON
GWYNN
JONES (and his consistency was amazing= 2.3 lowest for any full season!)



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Aaron
Gwynn
Jones
Cobb
Seaver

Mariano Rivera
Tony Gwynn
Hank Aaron
Chipper Jones
George Brett

That is very impressive that you had that memorized in your head without looking it up for a trivia question.

My thought was that some of the negative WAR will be when some of these guys first came up - like if a guy's first season was 20 at bats and he only got 4 singles, something like that. I figured, Ichiro hit the majors already a consistent performer.

But you might be right, I didn't look.

Bingo! This is the correct slate.

I was surprised when I researched the question that Chipper Jones was on the list.

Ichiro does have the most number of negative WAR seasons (3) -- but he's tied with three other players: Jeter, Ken Griffey Jr., and Nolan Ryan.

Ichiro was pretty awful for his last 8 or 9 years, but he put butts in seats.

I never knew Seaver had that bad year - a 5.50 ERA and 1.62 WHIP in 1982 with Cincinnati!

Not only that he got the other four right too. Very impressive indeed.

...not much is memorized in THIS head, I'll admit to nothing...other than using available resources...which is what we older guys use as we adapt to each new day.

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