Month: February 2014

“Spoonerized” Top 101 MLB Prospect Names

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A “spoonerism” is an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis) between two words in a phrase. They are named for Reverend William Archibald Spooner. These spoonerisms included “it is kisstomary to cuss the bride,” “The Lord is a shoving leopard,” and the classic: “Mardon me padom, you are occupewing my pie. May I sew you to another sheet?”

Now, in the baseball Twitterverse, spoonerisms of player’s names seem to crop up as an insult, when that player does something . . . umm . . . not too good. Or when folks are just being a bit silly, like this recent stream of tweets by Friend of the VORG, Andrew Padyk:

The VORG loves spoonerisms too, and offers you this “spoonerized” list of the Baseball Prospectus Top 101 Prospects:

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Teammates with the Same Repeating Initials

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Friend of the VORG David Branson sent me the following message recently: David Branson Greg Gagne and Gary Gaetti were teammates on a WS winning team. Other teams with players sharing the same repeating initials? Well, using the Lahman Baseball Database as my source for names, I found at least 382 instances of … Read more

If All “Initialed” Players went by their Given Names

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Yankees catching prospect J.R. Murphy has informed the club he wants to be known by his full given name, John Ryan Murphy. This got the VORG wondering about the given names of other “initialed” players, and how long their names would be if they went by their full given names (we’re excluding all hyphens, periods … Read more

Good-field, no-hit Cuban SS signed, and the VORG goes wild!

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The Dodgers continued their free-wheelin’, free-spending ways today, as they announced the signing of Cuban shortstop Erisbel Arruebarruena to a five year, $25 million deal. The early scouting report on Arruebarruena is a very strong glove with a very weak bat. But the VORG isn’t fretting about that. We are celebrating Arruebarruena’s possible appearance in … Read more

A “Freddie Freeman” List

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Maybe it was Freddie Freeman’s big contract extension, or his recent wedding engagement, but something possessed friend of the VORG HighHeatStats to ask me this: High Heat Stats Hey how about a Freddie Freeman list-players with identical 1st 3 letters in both names? Using the Lahman Baseball Database as my reference, I found … Read more

Rarest Scores in MLB History

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One cool aspect of an otherwise lackluster Super Bowl was the final score (43-8). Apparently it was the first game in NFL history to end with that specific score. That got the VORG wondering which results have never occurred in MLB history. Culling the game scores from 1900-2013, here are the final scores we’ve … Read more

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