Apologies if it’s been done before.
I like to wander over to Baseball Reference and just look at the lifetime stats of various baseball players. So sue me, I’m bored AND a fan. A lethal combination.
Here’s the game I came up with to amuse myself.
Go to the page of any player from your home team. (Or, more accurately, any team with whose history you’re intimately familiar.)
Then scroll down to the Similar Batters/Pitchers and Most Similar By Age lists are.
Find any player in those lists that once played for the same team (but not necessarily at the same time) as the player whose page your on. Click on that player’s name, then scroll down and repeat as often as possible.
The idea is to see how long of a “chain” you can create, with the common thread between players being a particular franchise.
For example, my team’s the Philadelphia Phillies. On a whim, I went to the page of Sixto Lezcano (1983-1984). Under “Most Similar by Age,” I find Jose Cardenal (1978-1979 Phillies).
Under “Similar Batters” for Cardenal, I found Garry Maddox (1976-1986).
From Maddox, I went to Gary Matthews (1982-1983), where I hit a dead end. So my chain consisted of Lezcano>Cardenal>Maddox>Mathews (4 players).
(It works better for relievers, who change teams much more frequently than position players, it seems.)
Caveat: You can only use links in those listings, not the transactions area (because obviously players listed there played on the same team as your guy.)
So who wants to give it a shot? I had a chain of 11 once for the Phillies.
