Birthday Debuts

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Major League Baseball Players Who Debuted on Their Birthday

On May 31, 2018, Shane Bieber made his major-league debut with the Cleveland Indians. His performance was largely non-descript: not historically great or notably bad (5.2 IP, 4 R, 8 H, 1 W, 6 K). But one thing was particularly noteworthy about Bieber's debut: it came on his 23rd birthday.

This got me curious about how many players in major-league history have debuted on their birthday. According to Baseball-Reference, Shane Bieber was the 19,266th player in major-league history. Assuming my database is accurate, it turns out that Bieber was the 38th player in major-league history to debut on his birthday - making the frequency of birthday debuts 1 in every 507 players in major-league history.

The next table shows the 37 players who made their major-league debut on their birthday. The players who are not linked played their entire major-league careers prior to the seasons for which Retrosheet has released play-by-play data (i.e., since ). For players with links, the links are to these players' player pages. The last column of the table shows a player's career pWORL - pWins over replacement level - for those players for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records.

Players Who Made Their Major League Debut on Their Birthday
	Birth Year	Debut Year	Birth / Debut Date	Age at Debut	Games	pWORL
Dan Long	1867	1890	August 27	23	21
Pete Gilbert	1867	1890	September 6	23	206
Fred Woodcock	1868	1892	May 17	24	5
Murphy Currie	1893	1916	August 31	23	6
Murphy Currie	1893	1916	August 31	23	6	0.0
George Ross	1892	1918	June 27	26	1	-0.1
Jess Doyle	1898	1925	April 14	27	55	1.0
Mace Brown	1909	1935	May 21	26	387	9.9
Morrie Aderholt	1915	1939	September 13	24	106	-1.5
Chris Haughey	1925	1943	October 3	18	1	-0.4
George Dockins	1917	1945	May 5	28	35	2.6
Bob Chesnes	1921	1948	May 6	27	90	1.9
Tom E. Hughes	1934	1959	September 13	25	2	-0.6
Ed Palmquist	1933	1960	June 10	27	36	-1.1
Gerry Arrigo	1941	1961	June 12	20	195	-1.9
Larry Dierker	1946	1964	September 22	18	357	19.5
Rene Lachemann	1945	1965	May 4	20	118	-0.9
Woodie Fryman	1940	1966	April 15	26	625	14.6
Mike Kilkenny	1945	1969	April 11	24	140	2.6
Junior Kennedy	1950	1974	August 9	24	446	4.0
Doug Clarey	1954	1976	April 20	22	9	0.1
John Pacella	1956	1977	September 15	21	74	-2.0
Bruce Benedict	1955	1978	August 18	23	982	0.0
La Rue Washington	1953	1978	September 7	25	28	-0.1
Dave Clark	1962	1986	September 3	24	889	-3.2
Ken Patterson	1964	1988	July 8	24	224	-0.0
Yorkis Perez	1967	1991	September 30	24	337	0.0
Dan Miceli	1970	1993	September 9	23	631	4.6
Brian Looney	1969	1993	September 26	24	7	-0.4
Keith Johnson	1971	2000	April 17	29	6	-0.0
Zach Day	1978	2002	June 15	24	86	0.1
Kevin Joseph	1976	2002	August 1	26	11	-0.2
Edwin Jackson	1983	2003	September 9	20	429	-2.9
Jarrod Saltalamacchia	1985	2007	May 2	22	895	2.8
Robert Manuel	1983	2009	July 9	26	13	0.1
David Adams	1987	2013	May 15	26	43	-0.3
Wilmer Flores	1991	2013	August 6	22	670	3.6
Kennys Vargas	1990	2014	August 1	24	236	-0.8
Daniel Corcino	1990	2014	August 26	24	7	-0.5
Shane Bieber	1995	2018	May 31	23	54	9.2

Two players who debuted on their birthday, George Ross and Chris Haughey, appeared in only one major-league game: Ross on his 26th birthday in 1918 (during World War I) and Haughey on his 18th birthday in 1943 (during World War II).

The youngest players to debut on their birthdays were the aforementioned Haughey and Larry Dierker, who each debuted on their 18th birthday.

The oldest player to debut on his birthday was Keith Johnson, who debuted on his 29th birthday in 2000.

The most common age for a birthday debut is 24, with eleven players in major-league history having debuted on their 24th birthday.

Shane Bieber is the sixth player to debut on his 23rd birthday, tying age 23 with age 26 as the second-most common debut birthday in major-league history.

Finally, setting aside the first four players on the list (none of whom had much of a career anyway), the top five players in major-league history who debuted on their birthday, ranked by career pWins over replacement level, are shown next.

Top Five Players Who Made Their Major League Debut on Their Birthday (Ranked by Career pWORL)
	Games	pWins	pLoss	pWOPA	pWORL
Larry Dierker	357	133.9	139.6	3.2	19.5
Woodie Fryman	625	145.5	156.6	-5.1	14.6
Mace Brown	387	53.8	54.8	1.2	9.9
Shane Bieber	54	22.4	16.5	6.4	9.2
Dan Miceli	631	37.8	39.5	-2.5	4.6

With his strong sophomore season, Shane Bieber is already in fourth place among players who debuted on their birthday. And with Bieber's ascension into the top five, the above table consists entirely of pitchers.

Article last updated: December 23, 2019

All articles are written so that they pull data directly from the most recent version of the Player won-lost database. Hence, any numbers cited within these articles should automatically incorporate the most recent update to Player won-lost records. In some cases, however, the accompanying text may have been written based on previous versions of Player won-lost records. I apologize if this results in non-sensical text in any cases.

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