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MLB debuts are a joyous occasion. The arrival in a big league clubhouse serves as a culmination of a lifetime worth of hard work and dedication. Even if the feeling is short lived, being able to say that you stepped between the lines on a Major League Baseball diamond is an incredible achievement.
Some guys are pegged for greatness at an early age, and their debut is more of a foregone conclusion than a call for celebration. Others spend years as minor league battle axes, get promoted when someone decides their oblique isn’t obliquing properly, and then are immediately sent down afterwards. Specifically on this list, we have a guy who played 787 MiLB games for four different organizations, then got 12 games in The Show last summer. There’s a dude who had to make his debut in Minute Maid Park against the Houston Astros, a team who cheats, and gave up home runs to two of the first four hitters he faced. My personal favorite, though, is someone who didn’t make this list.
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This is David McKay. He got his first big league action on May 20, 2019, throwing one shutout inning for the M’s against the Texas Rangers. He spent seven appearances in total as a Mariner, before being claimed on waivers by the Detroit Tigers. While all his subsequent appearances came chronologically later in the year, McKay managed to reach back into the time stream and rejigger his MLB debut on a technicality, by a single day. The Tigers May 19 game with the Oakland Athletics was suspended mid-game, and completed on September 6th. HOWEVER, because the game was scheduled initially for May 19, McKay’s historical “debut” is now as a Tiger in Oakland. Or at least it is for the purposes of this Sporcle.
Since the Mariners chose to Boggle their roster prior to the 2019 season, a whopping 26 players have made their major league debut while playing for them. I will venture to guess no one does better than 22/26 on this one. I should probably also note that several of these guys have since moved on to other organizations.