(*) MASTER NOTES: June Quiz!

At the end of May, I debuted little fantasy baseball quiz about the month just passed. I got a lot of friendly comments about it, so in the time-honored principle of beating any new idea half way to death, I’m doing it again for June.

As before, the rules are simple: Do your best to answer the questions, don’t use the Internet, and keep your results to yourself.

Also as before, we’ll have 10 questions about hitters, seven about starting pitchers, and three about relievers. The answers are at the end of the quiz.

Let’s begin!

Batters

B1. June saw 15 batters with 100+ PA amass OPS marks over 1.000, including offensive superstars like Paul Goldschmidt, Mike Trout and JD Martinez, the unlikely Max Muncy, and rising stars Juan Soto, Alex Bregman, Jesús Aguilar and Rhys Hoskins. Only one of these six other hitters— Jose Altuve, Nolan Arenado, Nelson Cruz, Marcell Ozuna, Giancarlo Stanton and Joey Votto—also had a June OPS over 1.000. Who?

B2. Yoán Moncada led one stat category by a huge margin. What was it?

B3. In what category did Lewis Brinson and Ketel Marte tie for the lead in June?

B4. Joey Votto, Mike Trout, Max Muncy and José Ramírez all drew 20+ walks in June. So did two other batters. Who were they?

B5. Among batters with 100+ PA in June, who drew the fewest walks?

B6. George Springer and Manny Machado led batters with seven each. Of what?

B7. Matt Olson was at 23% of fly balls, Gorkys Hernández at 22%, but in which outcomes: popups? Or home runs?

B8. Speaking of FB percentages, who had the highest in June?

B9. Goldschmidt tied for the lead in June for hard-hit balls with which AL West OF?

B10. Delino DeShields tied for fifth place in June with six SB, but led one other category with six ... what?

Starters

SP1. How did Jason Hammel, Ian Kennedy, Zack Wheeler and Nick Pivetta stand out from the crowd of 35 six-start pitchers?

SP2. Two starters won all five of their June starts. Jon Lester was one. Who was the other?

SP3. Among starters with 20+ IP, who led in June with a Dom rate at 14.9 K9—but started July off his team’s 25-man roster?

SP4. Put these starters with 4 or more starts in order of ERA, from best to worst: Tyler Anderson, Tyler Chatwood, Tyler Mahle, Tyler Skaggs.

SP5. Which almost entirely undrafted starter had 30 strikeouts in his 29 innings—and one walk?

SP6. Which starter surrendered the most HR in June, allowing 10 big flies in just 29 innings?

SP7. Not surprisingly, Junis led baseball in allowing hard contact—53% of his balls in play were scorched by opposing hitters. Which starters, one grizzled vet and one raw rookie, were tied for second in allowing hard-hit balls?

Relievers

RP1. TOR reliever Seung Hwan Oh tied for third in vulture wins with three. Oh also led all relievers in what other stat?

RP2. Among all 78 RPs who faced at least 50 batters in June, what didn’t Matt Grace do that made him a standout?

RP3. Among RPs with 50+ TBF, what was unusual about the command of Bruce Rondon, Bryan Shaw, Héctor Santiago, Miguel Castro, and Randy Rosario?

 

That’s the quiz for June! Scroll down (wayyyyy down) to check the answers below, and we’ll see you in a month, unless the management tells me to do some actual work.

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Enough, already.

ANSWERS

Batters

B1. Only Nelson Cruz got above the 1.000 mark, finishing the month third in OPS at 1.144. The rest fell a little short: Altuve at .982, Arenado at .933, Ozuna at .951, Stanton at .950 and Votto at .959.

B2. Moncada struck out 45 times, six more than Brandon Nimmo. By contrast, Ender Inciarte fanned nine times and Joe Panik just seven.

B3. Brinson and Marte each had four triples in June.

B4. The other two with 20+ walks in June were Carlos Santana (28, tied with Votto for the lead) and Shin-Soo Choo (20)

B5. Josh Harrison, Dee Gordon and Sal Perez had two walks each, twice as many as Kevin Pillar

B6. Springer and Machado both grounded into seven double plays, tied with Yangervis Solarte for the most in June.

B7. Hah! Trick question! Oddly enough, both Olson and Hernandez had the same percentages of flyballs become popups AND HR!

B8. The Astros’ Alex Bregman had a 61% FB rate, seven points higher than teammate Evan Gattis and Muncy. The lowest FB% belonged to Jon Jay, who got just 11% of his batted balls into the air. Matt Duffy had 14% FB, but one-quarter of those were popups.

B9. The other hard hitter was the Angels’ Justin Upton. Both he and Goldy smacked the horsehide (sportswriter lingo) to the tune of a 59% hard-hit rate. Nick Markakis was third at 58%. The lowest was Dee Gordon, at 17% hard-hit rate.

B10. DeShields paired his six swipes with six bunt hits, best in the game. Other smallball artistes included Rougned Odor (4) and Javier Báez and Dee Gordon (3 each).

Starters

SP1. All four of these starters went winless in their six starts.

SP2. The other starter to win all five of his starts was Zach Eflin of the Phillies.

SP3. COL starter Jon Gray had 43 whiffs in his 27 innings, but a 42% Hit Rate and 62% Strand contributed to 6.00/1.52 decimals and earned Gray a trip to Triple-A. By the way, Lester had a 17% Hit Rate and 95% Strand Rate in the month, which might have contributed to his decimals of 1.13/0.84. I’m not sayin’ sell high. I’m just sayin’.

SP4. Skaggs had the best ERA in the month, at 0.89, then came Mahle in 14th spot at 2.18, Anderson 57th at 3.52, and Chatwood 104th at 5.40. The worst ERA for the month belonged to Daniel Mengden, 134th out of 134 at 11.57.

SP5. The 30.0 Command Ratio belonged to LA starter Ross Stripling. The other double-digit Cmd for the month was a 10.0 K/bb by ATL starter Brandon McCarthy.

SP6. The gopherballer was Jakob Junis of KC, who had a 3.1 HR/9. Interestingly, Junis’ 23% HR/FB was only 14th highest in June, miles back of the 36% marks posted by Chad Bettis and Erick Fedde.

SP7. The two shell-shocked starters were veteran Bartolo Colón and rookie Frankie Montas, both of whom allowed 51% hard-hit balls-in-play. The lowest hard-hit percentage was 20%, by the aforementioned Zach Eflin of PHI, just ahead of Andrew Cashner, Tyler Chatwood, Brent Suter and Marco Estrada.

Relievers

RP1. Oh led all of baseball with three blown saves. Thirteen relievers had two each. The vulture leaders were Lou Trivino of OAK and Justin Miller of WAS, with four wins each. Oh and Reyes Moronta of SF tied with three.

RP2. Grace pitched in 10 games, facing 52 batters, and didn’t issue any walks, HBPs or Wild Pitches.

RP3. Well, calling it “Command” might be misleading. Rondon, Shaw, Santiago, Castro, and Rosario had more walks than strikeouts, therefore Cmd Ratios under 1.0. Brett Cecil, Elieser Hernández and Dylan Floro came close, with Cmd Ratios of exactly 1.0—the same number of walks as Ks.

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