When the Royals selected Sean Manaea in the recent MLB First-Year Player draft, the VORG noticed the paucity of unique letters in his name. You could spell his entire ten-letter name with only five distinct letters (a,e,m,n,s).
Previously, we had looked at the flip-side of the “unique letters” names. Folks like Dustin Ackley, Michael Bourn, Michael Young and Daniel Murphy had the longest names with all unique letters (12 in each case).
So, where would Mr. Manaea rate in terms of fewest unique letters in his name, amongst all MLBers? I took all the players listed in the indispensable Lahman Baseball Database and determine the length of each name (first and last combined) and the number of distinct letters in those names. In Mr. Manaea’s case, he comes up just short of the best of the ten-letter names, with George Gore holding that title.
Here then is the list, by name length, of the fewest unique letters in player names:
| Name | Length | Unique |
| Ed Ott | 5 | 4 |
| Al Hall | 6 | 3 |
| Bob Barr | 7 | 4 |
| Les Bell | 7 | 4 |
| Bob Botz | 7 | 4 |
| Bob Boyd | 7 | 4 |
| Doc Cook | 7 | 4 |
| Ona Dodd | 7 | 4 |
| Tom Dodd | 7 | 4 |
| Lee Elia | 7 | 4 |
| Ed Freed | 7 | 4 |
| Ed Greer | 7 | 4 |
| Don Hood | 7 | 4 |
| Bill Lee | 7 | 4 |
| Al Papai | 7 | 4 |
| Pat Rapp | 7 | 4 |
| Ted Reed | 7 | 4 |
| Bob Ross | 7 | 4 |
| Epp Sell | 7 | 4 |
| Lee Tate | 7 | 4 |
| Bob Wood | 7 | 4 |
| Doc Wood | 7 | 4 |
| Bill Bell | 8 | 4 |
| Bob Boone | 8 | 4 |
| Ed Edelen | 8 | 4 |
| Gary Gray | 8 | 4 |
| Hugh High | 8 | 4 |
| Bill Hill | 8 | 4 |
| Matt Kata | 8 | 4 |
| Greg Legg | 8 | 4 |
| Larry Ray | 8 | 4 |
| Gene Green | 9 | 4 |
| Pat Pettee | 9 | 4 |
| George Gore | 10 | 4 |
| Bert Brenner | 11 | 5 |
| Greg Garrett | 11 | 5 |
| Greek George | 11 | 5 |
| John Johnson | 11 | 5 |
| Josh Johnson | 11 | 5 |
| Mal Mallette | 11 | 5 |
| Heinie Meine | 11 | 5 |
| Elmer Miller | 11 | 5 |
| Elmer Miller | 11 | 5 |
| George Moore | 11 | 5 |
| Fred Pfeffer | 11 | 5 |
| Jeff Pfeffer | 11 | 5 |
| Pee Wee Reese | 11 | 5 |
| Lemmie Miller | 12 | 5 |
| Reggie Ritter | 12 | 5 |
| George Rettger | 13 | 5 |
| Carlos Carrasco | 14 | 6 |
| Rennie Stennett | 14 | 6 |
| George Bamberger | 15 | 7 |
| Nino Bongiovanni | 15 | 7 |
| Orestes Destrade | 15 | 7 |
| George Hogriever | 15 | 7 |
| Hernan Iribarren | 15 | 7 |
| Jonathan Johnson | 15 | 7 |
| Merle Settlemire | 15 | 7 |
| Robinson Chirinos | 16 | 8 |
| Cookie Cuccurullo | 16 | 8 |
| Mario Encarnacion | 16 | 8 |
| Armando Galarraga | 16 | 8 |
| Charlie Hollocher | 16 | 8 |
| John Henry Johnson | 16 | 8 |
| Takashi Kashiwada | 16 | 8 |
| Francisco Rosario | 16 | 8 |
| Gene Steinbrenner | 16 | 8 |
| Mark Strittmatter | 16 | 8 |
| Vito Valentinetti | 16 | 8 |
| Reggie Abercrombie | 17 | 9 |
| Kirk Dressendorfer | 17 | 9 |
| Angelo Encarnacion | 17 | 9 |
| Anderson Hernandez | 17 | 9 |
| Fernando Hernandez | 17 | 9 |
| Bill Knickerbocker | 17 | 9 |
| Arnie Portocarrero | 17 | 9 |
| Denny Riddleberger | 17 | 9 |
| Dorsey Riddlemoser | 17 | 9 |
| Hisanori Takahashi | 17 | 9 |
| Cannonball Titcomb | 17 | 9 |
| Shigetoshi Hasegawa | 18 | 9 |
| Charlie Reipschlager | 19 | 10 |
| William VanLandingham | 20 | 10 |