With MLB Opening Day upon us, we take a look at every team’s most-used Opening Day starter
Thursday is MLB Opening Day across the entire league, and every team will be in action. As a way to celebrate every single team participating in MLB Opening Day, we decided to take a look at every team’s history on Opening Day and find the player who started the most opening days at each position for every major league team.
First, let me give a few explanations of the methodology. This information was taken from Baseball Reference and their information is incredibly valuable. Each list begins in 1908 as that’s the first sure documentation of MLB Opening Day lineups. In the cases where two players had the same amount of games played at a position, the player who played the most overall Opening Day games for their organization got the nod. In some cases, that still left a tie!
When you look at the lists, each team is notated along with the number of Opening Day games that player had played at the position for the team. In parenthesis behind some players is another number, and that is the total number of Opening Day starts at all positions by that player. There will be some players that may have more Opening Day starts for an organization, but did not have the most at any one position. A few examples that stand out along those lines are Stan Musial with the St. Louis Cardinals and Kirby Puckett of the Minnesota Twins, both of whom had more Opening Day starts than some of the other guys on their respective teams’ lists, but they did not have more starts at any single position than other players, so they ended up not making this list.
So page through, find your favorite team, and enjoy these lists, and get ready for MLB Opening Day on Thursday! Take some time to enjoy the rest of the lists as well!
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