The Good And Bad From MLB’s “Player’s Weekend” Nickname Jerseys

On the last weekend of August, Major League Baseball is doing ‘Player’s Weekend’ in which teams wear Little League World Series style jerseys with their nicknames on them.

If you’re a normal person, you’ll probably acknowledge that this is a fun thing for kids and it’s good for social media engagement. But if you’re woke AF, you’re probably going to engage in a multi-tweet argument about how the league is only doing it for the money!!!!  Holy shit! Groundbreaking! Thank you! 

This nickname jersey thing obviously panders to the well-known, star players in the league. Jerseys like “Joey Bats”, “Stro Show”, and “Bringer of Rain” are going to fly off the shelves because these guys are actually known by those names and they’re intertwined with their brands on and off the field. So those ones are obvious.

The best one on the Blue Jays pretty easily is “No Panic” on Osuna’s jersey, with Aaron Sanchez’s “Sanchize” coming in a close second. Russell Martin’s “Muscle” is a very good one, too.

But after that, holy hell.

Steve Pearce and Aaron Loup would like for the world to know that their nicknames are Aaron “Loup” Loup and Steve “Pearce” Pearce. I expected that from Loup, but you would figure a dude like Pearce, who goes by @WayneTwentyOcho on Twitter would have something funny up his Sleeve. 

UPDATE:

Steve Pearce will actually be known as The Train. 

Justin Smoak is also not “Smoaky” as you might expect, he’s actually “Moaky” (???) and Marco Estrada is sadly not “ACEstrada”, he’s “Estradabien”. Kevin Pillar probably asked for Superman, which would have been declined due to copyright, and then rather than going with “I swing at everything”, he opted to roll with “Pill”.

Tulo, Zeke, Go Go, Mo Mo, and Dar Bar are obvious ones for Troy Tulowitzki, Ezequiel Carrera, Ryan Goins, Kendrys Morales, and Darwin Barney, while J.A. Happ, Ryan Tepera, Chris Smith, Danny Barnes, and Luke Mailey took the hockey player approach, going with Happer, Tep, Smitty, Barnzy, and Mailes.

Elsewhere around the league, we have a lot of your standard “Mad Bum”, “Thor”, “Yadi”, for those well-known fan favourites, and those boring dudes who just rock first or last names, but we also have a lot of under-the-radar guys coming out with hilarious stuff.

Like Travis d’Arnaud, for example, who is either very funny or very lacking in awareness.

Speaking of awareness, Kyle Seager knows what’s up.

Tulo should have at least considered this one. A.J. Ellis knows his role.

Andrew Triggs is probably the winner today, though his teammate Josh Phegley is right up there too.

I love what Rougned Odor selected for his nickname, though I wish the Rangers had gone all-in and put ‘back-to-back ALDS runner-ups’ somewhere on the uniform.

Another cool thing about these uniforms, as pointed out by Jays Girl Emily on Twitter, is the patch, which shows a player growing up from Little league to the Major Leagues. So, again, before you get angry and decide to take to the internet to show it, remember who these things are actually for!