Win a Free Copy of THT 2016!

Have you heard? The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2016 is now available for sale. You can check out the table of contents and read some excerpts from the book. When you finish that you can purchase it from our independent publishing platform, Createspace, in print form, or from Amazon in print form (the Kindle version should be available later this week).

But wait, there’s more! Because we’re giving folk, and since it’s the beginning of the holiday season and all, we want to give you a chance to win yourself a free copy of the book. So today and tomorrow (and yesterday), we’ll be running a trivia contest based on one of the articles in the book. The first person to post the correct answer in the comments will win a free physical copy of the book (sorry, no free Kindle version). It’s just that simple!

Today’s question comes to you from Carson Cistulli’s article, “A Haphazard, Historical Examination of Pitcher & Team NERD Scores.” It’s a highly entertaining article that not only takes a detour away from the core source material, but also takes time out to compare yours truly to one of literature’s scariest characters. Good times, these. (It also features the word “beflanneled” — if indeed that is a word.)

In it, Carson takes his NERD scores back a decade, to see just who the most appealing teams were. Cistulli breaks out his top 20 teams in rNERD (or Raw Nerd, or Nerd Score that has not yet been rounded down to 10 or up zero). The question concerning this top 20 list for you, dear reader, is this:

Which three teams appear three times on Cistulli’s “Top 20 Team rNerd Score, 2006-2015” leaderboard?

Note: If you name more than three teams, your entry will be automatically discarded.

Good luck!

UPDATE AT 2:02 PM ET: Hint!!! Two of the three teams are in the same division.
UPDATE AT 2:17 PM ET: Second Hint!!! One of the teams in the same division block has a nickname with just four letters.
UPDATE AT 2:30 PM ET: Third Hint!!! Wade Boggs played for two of the three teams, and the third team is located within the same state as one of the two teams Boggs played for.