One of the best parts about baseball is the wild, zany facts that can materialize. Here’s another of those. We often take note when a player starts Opening Day in a handful of consecutive seasons for a team. But what about when the opposite happens, and a team starts a different player at a specific position on Opening Day many years in a row?

Enter: the Giants. With Michael Conforto starting in left field for the Giants on Thursday, San Francisco has started a different player in left field on Opening Day in 18 straight seasons. That breaks a tie with the 2005-21 Padres, also at left field, for the second-longest streak of Opening Days starting a different player, with no repeaters, at any particular position since 1900, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

The longest such streak belongs to the Browns/Orioles from 1937-55, also at left field – a whopping 19 straight Opening Days with a different individual manning the position. Again, this is for any particular position, it just so happens that the top three are all left-field streaks.

The Giants have started a different player in left field each year since 2007, a streak that dates to Barry Bonds’ final year. Bonds started 14 of 15 seasons in left field for the Giants from 1993-2007, missing only '05, due to injury. Now, Conforto joins the ranks of Opening Day left fielders in recent (and not-so-recent) memory.

Giants Opening Day LF since 2007
2007: Barry Bonds
2008: Dave Roberts
2009: Fred Lewis
2010: Mark DeRosa
2011: Pat Burrell
2012: Aubrey Huff
2013: Andres Torres
2014: Mike Morse
2015: Nori Aoki
2016: Angel Pagan
2017: Jarrett Parker
2018: Hunter Pence
2019: Connor Joe
2020: Alex Dickerson
2021: Austin Slater
2022: Joc Pederson
2023: Blake Sabol
2024: Michael Conforto