Immaculate Grid: Show Off Your Useless Baseball Depth Knowledge!

[Brand Name]

Add this one to your Wordle daily rotation. Comes up daily at midnight. 3 by 3 grid. You miss one, you can't be perfect, only 9 attempts. Hence immaculate grid. I helped make this one popular, both on Twitter and in the MLBN offices. It's a topic of daily discussion among departments for the latter.

Example from Friday:




Reading this as:

1-2-3
4-5-6
7-8-9

1 needs a player who played for the Angels and Tigers.
2 requires a player that did so for the Cardinals/Angels.
3 needs a player who hit .300 in a season for the Angels.
4 for Rays/Tigers
5 for Cardinals/Rays
6 for a Ray hitting .300
7 for 20+ wins in a season for a Tiger
8 20+ win season for a Cardinal
9 20+ wins in a season while hitting .300

You can spoil them give green squares to indicate correct, etc. My goal is to not just get all 9 but the lowest score because I think 9 alone is personally too easy. I make it a goal to not only get all 9 but include at least one deadball-era guy AND hope to get all sub-1.0% sets. My personal best for a low was Joey Devine for A's/Braves a few days ago when I was 1 in like 14,000 to name him.

How did you do and with whom?

 

[Over Guapo Grande]

Holy Mike Carp (not to be confused with Mike Trout)— this is amazing and certainly not something I want to even consider doing before my second pot of coffee.

 

[epraz]

This is great, love it. I would’ve been much better at it when I was 20 and playing fantasy than I am at 40 with kids. (Or even when I was 6 and looking at the box scores every morning)

 

[edoug]

Jess, you are at a different level. I try to make lay ups and you do Larry Bird/Michael Jordan McDonalds commercial trick shots.

Spoiler

Expansion teams kill me in this.

 

[Bertha]

this is great. Thanks for sharing. I got 5, which including a few stupid guesses.

 

[Dollar]

I wish it was possible to play games from previous days, because I absolutely sucked today.

And was this created by the Jomboy team? They've been playing a game like this on the JM Baseball youtube page since early this year. I wish they would come out with a version of Ref Guess that anyone can play (you see a snapshot of a baseball-reference page, and you have to guess the player). Here's a Sporcle in the meantime.

 

[Brand Name]

Jess, you are at a different level. I try to make lay ups and you do Larry Bird/Michael Jordan McDonalds commercial trick shots.

Haha, thanks for this, love it. You do great though, don't undersell yourself. I just read a lot of SABR articles, read a lot of Reference, and play about as much in baseball sims like MVP, The Show, etc. Anyone could do that!

I wish it was possible to play games from previous days, because I absolutely sucked today.

And was this created by the Jomboy team? They've been playing a game like this on the JM Baseball youtube page since early this year. I wish they would come out with a version of Ref Guess that anyone can play (you see a snapshot of a baseball-reference page, and you have to guess the player). Here's a Sporcle in the meantime.

Immaculate Grid on Twitter won't give you the percentages and you have to search it manually but will give you the prior grids.

Remarkably, no, this isn't Jack/JM Baseball/Jolly Olive's, who does Ref Guess too. I know almost all the Jomboy people pretty well from social media networking to imply as much. This has meant the Connect Grid marketing has since shifted to Immaculate Grid in the titles and such. I've also been in DMs with the creator of this game earlier in the week: We both agree there might be some good changes going forward, like a specific way to score, where the lowest total wins, and so forth. Keep your eye out for that!

Ref Guess on a page would be sick. I watch all the YouTube ones and I've had maybe 2 all-time that took me longer than 10 seconds. Most are instant.

Today was disappointing I didn't get to do any deadball. Plenty of low scorers though...

Spoiler: June 24 2023 results

 

[mikeford]

my lowest % today was 2% and that guy was in the HOF and had his number retired by one of the teams.

what

Edit: now that the day has passed I will say it was Roberto Alomar.

 

[edoug]

@Brand Name I read the Sporting News and always got the Baseball Almanac growing up. Plus the baseball cards. I do okay to fine. You are amazing at it.

 

[Red(s)HawksFan]

Kinda proud of myself on today's grid. Totally blew the easy choice on one square to fill a different square where I had multiple options, then hit on a totally wild guess to complete the immaculate grid.

Spoiler

Put Bonds in the MVP/Pirates square then he was the only Giants/Pirates player I could think of. At the point of giving up, I threw McCutchen in because he won an MVP with the Pirates and should have been my guess there. Completely forgot he did play for the Giants briefly. Yay for me, I suppose.

 

[Chainsaw318]

This is both fun and mind melting. The “guys who played for these two teams “ ones are fantastically frustrating for me.

I felt for most of the late 90’s, 2000’s and 2010’s, I would have known a lot of who played where, as a more than casual fan.

When I started cheating on those, it took me way longer to find guys who played for those NL West or Central Teams or both.

There’s about 30 guys in the early 2000s that if me they had okayed Red, Pirate, Astro or Giant, I’d believe you.

 

[edoug]

Kinda proud of myself on today's grid. Totally blew the easy choice on one square to fill a different square where I had multiple options, then hit on a totally wild guess to complete the immaculate grid.

Spoiler

Put Bonds in the MVP/Pirates square then he was the only Giants/Pirates player I could think of. At the point of giving up, I threw McCutchen in because he won an MVP with the Pirates and should have been my guess there. Completely forgot he did play for the Giants briefly. Yay for me, I suppose.

Mine was very similar, except for the not completing it part.

Spoiler

I screwed up big time. I really wanted to put Pete Harnisch in the Cin/Hou slot. I knew Morgan was a Giant. Santiago was a fluke.

 

[Scott Cooper's Grand Slam]

This is fun. Thanks for sharing, Jess. I had a couple absolute gimmes, but I had one pull with a .05% similarity rate (that I only knew because of a Pedro connection).

Spoiler

Immaculate Grid 83 9/9:

 

[Brand Name]

Best day here so far. Crushed this like I did on Zac Efron in the mid-late 2000s.

Spoiler: June 25 results

 

[Dollar]

8 out of 9... much better than yesterday.

Spoiler: results

Missed the Reds/Astros player, but did nail Darren Lewis as the Giants player with 30+ SB, at 0.6%. I used to love that guy.

 

[Kenny F'ing Powers]

Best day here so far. Crushed this like I did on Zac Efron in the mid-late 2000s.

Spoiler: June 25 results

View attachment 66462

I pooped the bed on this one. 5 of 9. I was positive that...

Spoiler

Andrew McCutchen would have fit here somewhere.

 

[Bertha]

I like brand name’s intentional degree of difficulty. I did not do this on purpose but got a .4% on upper left. Felt silly I missed the obvious, but that does demonstrate shooting for lesser known players is going to be both fun and nostalgic.

 

[Red(s)HawksFan]

I pooped the bed on this one. 5 of 9. I was positive that...

Spoiler

Andrew McCutchen would have fit here somewhere.

View attachment 66464

Spoiler

McCutchen does fit (see my post earlier today). He played for the Giants and Pirates, and he won an MVP while with Pittsburgh. You've got those two spots occupied already.

 

[dirtynine]

Fun stuff. I’m pretty bad at the NL, but I pulled out a couple wildcards.

Spoiler

 

[edoug]

I like brand name’s intentional degree of difficulty. I did not do this on purpose but got a .4% on upper left. Felt silly I missed the obvious, but that does demonstrate shooting for lesser known players is going to be both fun and nostalgic.

It does feel good to find a player with a low percentage number.

 

[edoug]

And @Brand Name certainly accomplished that. Fantastic job, Jess!

 

[NYCSox]

All 9 including a 0.2% call.

Spoiler: Spoiler

Joel Youngblood - SF and Cin

 

[Bongorific]

This is great, love it. I would’ve been much better at it when I was 20 and playing fantasy than I am at 40 with kids. (Or even when I was 6 and looking at the box scores every morning)

100% this. Awesome work Jess. This is a ton of fun, but I’m embarrassed to say I got 6 today my first time playing this.

 

[Brohamer of the Gods]

Best day here so far. Crushed this like I did on Zac Efron in the mid-late 2000s.

Spoiler: June 25 results

View attachment 66462

I'm surprised your Dodger's 30+ SB answer is such a low percentage. That was his entire game.

 

[edoug]

8/9 Fair enough

Spoiler

I actually missed the Red Sox/Rangers slot. My first pick was Tom House. I knew he was a pitching coach but thought he played for them too. I was wrong.

 

[Chainsaw318]

I blew it on a guess for 200k Royals pitcher

My guess had 193 in his best Strikeout season. That stings a little.

 

[Jim Ed Rice in HOF]

I blew it on a guess for 200k Royals pitcher

My guess had 193 in his best Strikeout season. That stings a little.

We had the same guess.

 

[Tuff Ghost]

My takeaway from this is that I wish they had this back in the 90's when I was playing MLB videogames and watching Sportscenter every morning. Almost all of my guesses (except for one, the bottom-right cell) came from my childhood/teenage years! It's amazing what stays with you.

Spoiler: 8/9 grid results

My incorrect guess was a shot-in-the-dark: Roberto Alomar for Cleveland/KC. The Cleveland column took me a solid 5 minutes of blankly staring at the screen, only to get 2/3.

 

[Bongorific]

Just to save you all some aggravation, Mondesi doesn’t count for the KC/BOS square.

 

[CaptainLaddie]

Whew my first 9/9!

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

I'm the only one here who thinks

Spoiler: Spoiker

Spike Owen

?

 

[edoug]

Whew my first 9/9!

That's cool Captain! It is a relief.

 

[jmcc5400]

I'm the only one here who thinks

Spoiler: Spoiker

Spike Owen

?

Spoiler

I used Spike in my Ms/Sox square and the immortal Larry Parrish in the Tex/Sox square. Like others, my sweet spot is mid'70s to mid-'90s.

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

Spoiler

I used Spike in my Ms/Sox square and the immortal Larry Parrish in the Tex/Sox square. Like others, my sweet spot is mid'70s to mid-'90s.

If guys were on the '86 Sox I know everything about their careers

 

[mikeford]

I blew it on a guess for 200k Royals pitcher

My guess had 193 in his best Strikeout season. That stings a little.

man I guess I don't understand the rules cuz I picked Gaylord Perry for one of them and he's had a 200k season but it wasn't for that team so it didn't count. But I was able to pick someone for MVP yesterday who didn't win the MVP with that team.

 

[mikeford]

also i feel like everyone on this board is going to have the same answer for BOS/SEA

 

[Old Fart Tree]

Whew my first 9/9!

I still haven't gotten 9/9. I just can't think of anyone who played on the Brewers or Indians, apparently.

 

[Zedia]

I still haven't gotten 9/9. I just can't think of anyone who played on the Brewers or Indians, apparently.

The seemingly simple “think of a guy who played for these two teams” has thrown me every day.

 

[Sad Sam Jones]

Yeah, I had a 9/9 sitting right there for the taking and then tried to get cute... I could think of two obvious Rangers who have struck out 200, so I went with the 3rd guy who came to mind and was wrong.

 

[jmcc5400]

Yeah, I had a 9/9 sitting right there for the taking and then tried to get cute... I could think of two obvious Rangers who have struck out 200, so I went with the 3rd guy who came to mind and was wrong.

Kevin Brown has screwed me two days in a row. But I'll always have Game 7 in '04, so I'm still way ahead.

 

[Old Fart Tree]

The seemingly simple “think of a guy who played for these two teams” has thrown me every day.

Same here. Unless it's the AL East, then I have a chance. Red Sox, I typically crush.

 

[Chainsaw318]

also i feel like everyone on this board is going to have the same answer for BOS/SEA

was he traded to SEA for some guys? Or do you mean A guy signed more recently?

I picked the famous first one of those an it was 4%

 

[mikeford]

was he traded to SEA for some guys? Or do you mean A guy signed more recently?

I picked the famous first one of those an it was 4%

traded for some guys

 

[jmcc5400]

traded for some guys

Pretty significant trades between Bos/Sea in 1986 and 1997, so it's hard to pinpoint just one guy.

 

[Dollar]

traded for some guys

Yep, that's who I went with. 8/9... couldn't get the center square and my lowest was a 2% guess. I'll take it!

 

[Sad Sam Jones]

Thinking of a guy who played for two random teams is one of those games I've played for years when I can't sleep... it's enough to take my mind off not being able to sleep or whatever is stressing me and usually leads to some tangent without thinking too much to stay awake. Being a Cleveland fan, I nailed those with the forgotten side of a couple of trades and a guy who homered in his only at-bat with the Indians.

 

[Bozo Texino]

I can always fill out the bottom row and the rightmost column, but ugh - I'm shitty when it comes to naming players who played for multiple teams.

 

[Chainsaw318]

traded for some guys

And one of those guys would have worked as well, which is a funny way to look at it. The position player in that deal never played for the Mariners.

 

[Hyde Park Factor]

I was a little too quick when I saw the answer I wanted as I typed in the name and I ended up picking

Spoiler

Jackie Jensen instead of Jackie Bradley Jr.

blew a guess on that one

 

[Over Guapo Grande]

also i feel like everyone on this board is going to have the same answer for BOS/SEA

I got a guy with 0.2%... so either we are all esoteric, or I am stuck in an era of 90s outfielders.