Sunday night’s matchup between the Mets and Yankees looks to be a good one, as both teams are playing well overall and CC Sabathia opposes the remarkable R.A. Dickey.
Of course, the VORG finds the “initials as first names” of the pitchers intriguing. Here are the men with initials for their first names that have started at least one game in 2012:
| Games started in 2012 by pitchers with initials as their first name |
|---|
| A.J. Burnett (Allan James) |
| C.J. Wilson (Christopher John) |
| CC Sabathia (Carsten Charles) |
| J.A. Happ (James Anthony) |
| P.J. Walters (Phillip DeWayne) |
| R.A. Dickey (Robert Alan) |
Sunday will be the first meeting of the season between any two of these six “initialized” pitchers. In fact, it will be only the seventh meeting of “initial first names” in the Retrosheet era, all of them since 2005. Here are the others:
| Date | VisT | HmT | VisSP | HmSP |
| 8/19/2005 | LAN | FLO | D.J. Houlton | A.J. Burnett |
| 5/1/2007 | TOR | CLE | A.J. Burnett | CC Sabathia |
| 6/30/2007 | TBA | CLE | J.P. Howell | CC Sabathia |
| 4/16/2010 | TEX | NYA | C.J. Wilson | CC Sabathia |
| 8/10/2010 | NYA | TEX | A.J. Burnett | C.J. Wilson |
| 5/14/2011 | NYN | HOU | R.A. Dickey | J.A. Happ |
