Blue Jays: Ranking the players weekend jersey nicknames

Major League Baseball’s Players’ Weekend offers the chance for players to exhibit creativity and humour while still playing the game they love.

While there seems to be a lot of (unsubstantiated) criticism for MLB’s Players’ Weekend, I for one like it quite a bit. It’s fun, entertaining, and from a business standpoint, offers teams the chance to sell more jerseys. Most of all, the players like it.

With that said, the list of Blue Jays nicknames was just released, and with that in mind, here’s a ranking of the nicknames. For the purposes of this list, I’ve categorized them into three groups: the great, the weird and the boring.

The Great

Every once and awhile, nicknames come along that really make you chuckle. This year, Ken Giles’ “100 Miles Giles” and Luke Maile’s “Lukey Barrels” nicknames top the list for me. Russell Martin’s French-Canadian heritage is evident in his awesome nickname, “Le Muscle”, playing on his full name “Russell Le Muscle”.

Also, Justin Smoak’s nickname, “Moakey”, is one to be admired for sure, despite its seemingly cryptic origin. I asked Justin Smoak what the nickname meant last year ahead of the first Players’ Weekend, to which he replied: “a lot of the Spanish players have trouble saying the S-M sound in my name, so they call me Moakey”.

Marco Estrada’s “Estratosphere”, which he believes originates from the fans, and Kendrys Morales’ “Monina”, the Cuban colloquialism for “friend”, also top the list of cool and unique names that will be emblazoned on the backs of Blue jerseys come Players’ Weekend.

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The Weird

Unsurprisingly, eccentric reliever Joe Biagini headlines this section, owing his “Joe the Great” moniker to a classic episode of Seinfeld, a show that he considers himself a huge fan of.

Yangervis Solarte’s nickname, “Tutu”, was inspired by a friend who couldn’t pronounce his first name and instead opted for “Tutu”.

The Boring

Nothing wrong at all with these, just that they’re predictable and rather unexciting. The list includes Sam Gaviglio (“Gaviglio”), Kevin Pillar (“KP”), Randal Grichuk (“Grich”), Ryan Tepera (“Tep”), Devon Travis (“D-Trav”), Richard Urena (“Richi”) and Brandon Drury (“Dru”).

Overall, Players’ Weekend is shaping up to be an entertaining and unique affair. That weekend, the Blue Jays will take on the Philadelphia Phillies at Rogers Centre.