tfloyd’s recent foray into Braves named José got me thinking about MLB first names. So I did a little shallow dive into first names in MLB. Some underbrush first… I have a source of names and I’m not going to take the time to parse them. You might think Bob=Robert or Chipper=Larry or Andrés=Andres, but you’re wrong until you’re done reading this, at which point you can go back to your normal ideas about names. There are also a few players whose name changed duting their careers, so that for example, sometimes he was Dave Johnson and sometimes he was Davey Johnson. And don’t get me started on Fausto Carmona/Roberto Hernández.

My database consists of 20,422 players. There are at least three different ways to look at the best names. The first is just raw count. The top 5 are:

Bill494
John435
Mike430
Jim405
Joe388

These 5 names have provided just over 10 percent of all major leaguers, demonstrating that for a long period of time, parents of baseball players were not very inventive. This may be the most boring table I ever created.

Things are not much more interesting when we look at Total WAR by first name:

Mike1781
Jim1710
Joe1650
Bill1551
Bob1443

There are a couple of lessons in these two tables: first, while the name John is a pretty good ticket to the major leagues, John’s have clearly underperformed. John’s average only 2.7 WAR, well under the 3.4 output of Bob’s. Second, no matter what your common name, the average performance is pretty low. For every Mike Schmidt there are a number of Mike Hessman‘s This is unsurprising, since most players are pretty close to replacement level. The average WAR across all 20,422 players is 4.5, and this is a very skewed distribution: just over half (11,197) have positive WAR over their careers.

So much for the popular first names: what about the unpopular ones? There have been 1,637 singleton names, As you might expect, there have been some very good and very bad players with these names. The top 5 performers were Tris (135), Rogers (127), Honus (120), Christy (107) and Gaylord (90). Sure you know all those. But what about the bottom 5: Daryle (-4.4), Myril (-4.4), Crazy (-4.7), Kirtley (-5.2) and Andres (-5.7)? Of course one of these we all should recognize: Andres is none other than than former Braves shortstop Andres Thomas, about which we can make two observations: (a) his -5.7 career WAR is, while only in the top 25 of worst careers ever, the only one with a unique first name; and (b) but is it? Is he Andres or Andrés? If the latter, he gets averaged in with, among others, The Big Cat. As I said above, I’m not doing any parsing on names here, but it seems to me a little odd that he’s Andres in one database and Andrés in another. (I should point out that my José analysis earlier in the week explicitly combined Jose and José — I can be careful when I want to.)

Get to the Game, Would Ya?

Glad to oblige, In the second game of this series, Grant Holmes took on World Champion Eduardo Rodriguez. What an outing for Sherlocks. No-hitter for the first five innings with baffling levels of spin. But a single and a walk in the sixth with one out (an out they were lucky to get, requiring a five-start play from Austin Riley) created the first opportunity for Los Serpientes (I like those alt-jerseys) but then got Geraldo Perdomo to hit into a double play to end the first real threat.

On the other side, Rodriguez survived a threat in the first, cruised from there into the sixth, where he survived first and third with one out. He exited with a clean slate after 7.

So once neither starter blinked, it was bullpen time. Dylan Lee took the 7th for the Braves, matched by Juan Morillo in the 8th. Robert Suarez worked a quick 8th, and it was 0-0 headed to the 9th.

Not for long. Ozzie Albies and Matt Olson took Paul Sewald back-to-back. Three quick outs from Raisel Iglesias and that was that. It’s only a week in, but I’m beginning to hear the rustling of critics being silenced regarding Ozhaino, which would have been a unique first name had he used it.

Eight games, three shutouts. That’ll do.

Random Notes

The game was on Apple TV, Dontrelle Willis is flat-out appealing as a color guy.. The highlight, though was the interview with Mike Soroka that brought up some cherished memories. I will root for him forever.

Weiss pulled a maneuver I expect to see more of this year, but it’s a one that you would never see Snitker or Cox do. Mike Yastrzemski hit for Heim in the top of the eight and stayed in the game to replace Eli White, forcing Baldwin to move from DH to catcher, and inserting into the sixth spot. This would have been all kinds of controversial in the past: you lose your DH and you have no backup catcher, But what Bobby Cox would have done instead is dutifully hit Jonah Heim and dance with lineup card he brung. But in the new baseball world where games very rarely go past 12 innings, it made perfect sense. Dominic Smith hit for Suarez and they still had Jorge Mateo to pinch hit next time through. It’s not a move without risk, but the risk-reward tradeoff is obvious. Expect to see it more. At some point it’s going to mean a pitcher comes to the plate. i’m fine with that.