Nicknames the Blue Jays Should Put on Their Jerseys for 'Players Weekend'

Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports obtained a memo from MLB this week about an odd thing the league is planning for August.

This zany scheme has a chance to be as legendary as the league's cringe-worthy 1999 Turn Ahead The Clock promotion. But only if they do it right.

And by "right," I mean if they listen to me!

"Typical," "organic," "normal" nicknames are mostly boring. Let's spice it up a bit! Add a little pizzazz where we can! And while I can't provide this service to the entire league without some kind of major compensatory deal in place *COUGH*, I can show MLB that I'm serious, and that I've got the goods on this one by going through the Toronto Blue Jays roster and telling you what each player's nickname jersey should read.

Please don't @ me…

Danny Barnes
I could probably do this with every single one of these (don't worry, I won't), but Barnes has a name that genuinely lends itself perfectly to the traditional, dull-headed "baseball nickname"—which is, of course, exactly like a "hockey nickname," it just applies to fewer guys named Wayne or Gord. BARNSEY it is!

Darwin Barney
Weird. I fully expected the Jays' 25th man to go with DAR-BAR, or something similar that, on his nameplate, but it says here it should actually be LEBLEBIJIAN. So weird!

Jose Bautista
JOEY BATS would be the easy choice, and I'm sure his agent would push for it. John Gibbons would probably prefer JOSEY. But remember that time Bautista pranked us all by tweeting out a pic of a security badge with his name spelled incorrectly? It turned out he and a clubbie were just having fun, but something tells me the man with the cannon for an arm might just prefer the nickname HOSE. It's… uh… it's got a bit of a double entendre thing going on there, too, doesn't it?

Jeff Beliveau
Not so much a nickname as it is a thing I assume he says at least 14 times every day: NO, REALLY, I PITCH FOR THE BLUE JAYS. YES, THE TORONTO BLUE JAYS! (It can't be that much harder than squeezing "Saltalamacchia" onto a jersey, right?)

Joe Biagini
The temptation here is to assume that Biagini should go for something "funny," but he's not quite so easy to read as that. He'll throw you a curveball (see what I did there?), or a thinker. For me, nothing would be more quizzical and in tune with his personality than a 6'5" weirdo of a man on a major league mound wearing a jersey that simply says JOE. And when he comes into the game, the stadium will go dark save for a single spotlight, and he'll be lowered down to the mound on a crescent moon. Yep, that's perfect. Make that one permanent!

Ezequiel Carrera
As easy as it would be to simply go with some variation on ZEKE—maybe BIG ZEKE or, better yet, EAZY-Z—in my heart of hearts I will always remember Buck Martinez's early attempts at pronouncing his name—"Ezeeekielelllrrrghhhelrlllghghhh CALLERRREUURRRUGHHHHLLELE. So I'd definitely go with that.

Chris Coghlan
As a sign of respect I'd like to go here with what people really call him, COGS, but if we want to get really real we'd go with something like PLACEHOLDER FOR STEVE PEARCE. Ahh, but since the weekend in question isn't until late August, we can get even more real yet: PROBABLY IN OAKLAND.

Steve Pearce
PEARCY would be too easy, and would belie what a monster bro the Jays' freshly healthy outfielder kinda seems to be. At the very least it pales in comparison to his own puzzling Twitter handle, WAYNETWENTYOCHO.

Josh Donaldson
Donaldson can wear whatever he damn well pleases. BRINGER OF RAIN it is.

Marco Estrada
There was once a Canadian media company that had a veritable dream team of online sportswriters producing articles, podcasts, videos, and all sorts of terrific daily content in a separate vertical from their mobile app and its bite-sized news crumbs (I also showed up sometimes). Then we all got shitcanned. Er…. "restructured." Anyway! Back then Marco Estrada was just a mediocre pitcher for the Brewers and the only two things interesting about him were his names, which we all enjoyed riffing on for some reason. POLO ERIK it is. Getting Blanked represent!

John Gibbons
We never actually see John Gibbons in a jersey, and since MLB lets managers wear a pullover or a jacket the truth is, it's entirely possible he doesn't even have one. But were he ever to wear one, if it doesn't say GIBBY on the back there is something truly wrong with this world.

Ryan Goins
Uhhh… change his number to 3 and use IN THE FOUNTAIN?? Oh damn. I'm so old.

Jason Grilli
Who am I to deny a dead man walking his last request? He can have GRILL CHEESE if he wants it.

J.A. Happ
In honour of one of the few truly great sports figure parody Twitter accounts, J.A.'s gotta go with HAPPSTER. Then he's got to go to Parkdale for some organic brunch, a game of kickball, and later maybe take his fixie up the railpath to the Junction for some craft beers and bourbon.

Dominic Leone
Leone's middle name is Joseph, so… uh… DOJO? Hopefully he likes martial arts! Maybe he could make that his thing, get a hachimaki and everything—you know, Alomar style!

Francisco Liriano
"I am 1 of many who keep falling for this guy every 5 days. His game logs are ugly and he sux but for some reason he keeps getting rostered," wrote a poster three years ago on some message board at a vaguely daily fantasy sports-related site called RotoGrinders. "So lets go ahead and add a new nickname to the DFS thesaurus. Henceforth Francisco Liriano shall be referred to as BEANS Liriano. Because when beans are around, you just know what they are going to do to you later. You eat them and in a couple hours you're going to be incredibly uncomfortable and troubled, yet you see them with a little salt and wrapped up in a taco and you devour them anyways." Uh… sure. I mean, I actually have a lot of questions about this, but sure.

Aaron Loup
Easy on the POOP jokes, kids. Aaron has actually been pretty decent this season! Or… at least he's been somewhat better than we've seen the last few years. Maybe? Anyway, it's still a Wild Ride (™) every time he's brought into the game, so I'm going to stick with an old standard of mine and go with UNCLE LOUPY. (He's gonna have to pitch a lot better before I toss a LOUP-GAROU his way.)

Luke Maile
AIR MAILE? SPECIAL DELIVERY? THE WHOLE PACKAGE? FRAMES BY MAILE? FRAMZE BY MAILE? Nah, it's AIR MAILE. Like his throws to second base would be if he was bad at that!

Russell Martin
At the 2009 World Baseball Classic, Martin honoured his mother by asking for the letter "J" to be put on his jersey (her last name is Jeanson). His J. MARTIN jersey, in addition to also being a sweet nod in the direction of the doofus from The Tea Party, had me referring to him as "Jussell" for literally years. And while in my heart I'd like to say he should go with JUSSELL here because of that, the Blue Jays themselves offered a different option on Wednesday night, when they tweeted a clip of his big home run from their game against the Rays. "That's why he's #RussellTheMuscle!" they said, which… nobody actually calls him, but we'll go with THE MUSCLE regardless!

Kendrys Morales
Morales played as "Kendry" through 2010, then missed the entire 2011 season after exploding his ankle while celebrating a walk-off grand slam (which he hit off former Blue Jays closer Brandon League—surf's up!). When he came back he finally corrected the record, declaring that his name is actually "Kendrys." Old habits die hard, though, I guess, because you'd be surprised how many fans still use the incorrect pronunciation—which is why he needs to underline the right one with a phonetic nameplate: KEHN-DREEZ.

Roberto Osuna
People love that "Osuna Matata" thing, but I just can't go for hokey Disney shit. DIRTY BOB works for me, though, and since this is my list (and since I don't know Spanish and therefore can't come up with a sweet, appropriate name for Osuna en español), that's what we're going to go with!

Kevin Pillar
The king of the TV dive is not short on hubris, so of course he'll go with SUPERMAN. Of course he will. (Kevin Pillar is great and I truly, truly apologize for this. But for real.)

Aaron Sanchez
Heartwarming as it might be for Aaron to pine for the days of having a teammate/bestie and go with something like STROCHEZ4EVA, I'm pretty sure that ship has sailed. Besides, Aaron is a professional, and a no-nonsense baseball type who, above all else, listens to his manager. And when his manager speaks to him, he calls him SANCHY. So that's what it has to be.

Dwight Smith Jr.
Is Smith even going to be on the team by late August? If he does happen to be in Toronto, my hope is that he'll choose a nickname that evokes a summer of being shuttled between the majors and minors, always a short distance away from Toronto. DWIGHTDOWNTHEQ.E.W. or something.

Joe Smith
I'm not sure that it's right to give someone with literally the plainest name in the English language the chance to give himself a nickname jersey. I kiiiiinda think it would probably end up like giving Rod and Todd Flanders an IV drip of pure cocaine. Too much chance for menace and for sailing over an edge even the best of us would have trouble coming back from. Not everyone is equipped to handle all the possibilities that are really out there in this world. I think it's for the best that Joe just pass on this exercise.

Justin Smoak
Having him wear SMOAKY (or even SMOAKEY) would be much too easy. If I'm Justin Smoak I go the simple route. The understated route. The troll route. UNDERPAID.

Marcus Stroman
He's always hawking those HDMI cables of his (or whatever that's about), so I'm tempted to riff on that. We could put THE above his uniform number and an IX next to it, I suppose. But it's probably best here if we just go with STROSHOW. Gotta stay on #brand, my man. Gotta stay on #brand.

Ryan Tepera
He may not like the connotation about his height (or whatever else), but you gotta go with SHRIMP TEPERA here. The walk-off walk headlines write themselves!

Devon Travis
There's the obvious answer here, and then there's the "fun" answer: Devon Travis should wear Q: ARE WE NOT MEN? Ahhhh, a delightful homage to one of the great new wave records! (Look it up, kids). Maybe they'll even let him wear the hat! [Author's Note: This one barely even qualifies as a "joke," but the only other option I could come up with was THICK D, so we'll have to live with the dumb Devo reference. But whatever, he'll inevitably be on the DL anyway. Heeeeyyy! What about THICK DL??]

Troy Tulowitzki
The answer is TULO. Obviously. No muss, no fuss, no smiling. Now let's cut out this nonsense and go take ground balls for four hours!