Thursday Bantering: Jersey Spelling Mistakes

With Player’s Weekend on August 25th-27th, Major League Baseball announced the nicknames set to be featured on the back of player’s jerseys yesterday. Some of them, like “Corey’s Brother” for Kyle Seager or “PTBNL” for Josh Phegley, are brilliant. Others aren’t.

Notable Blue Jay nicknames include “Bringer of Rain” (Josh Donaldson), “Joey Bats” (Jose Bautista), “Stro-Show” (Marcus Stroman) and “No Panic” (Roberto Osuna). Devon Travis’s nickname is The Babby.

At least that’s what the official press release states. In a media scrum prior to the game, Travis said that the extra B in baby was simply a spelling error. Additionally, Steve Pearce, originally listed simply as “Pearce,” will have “The Train” as his nickname. He wanted “Wayne Train,” but it was copyrighted.

One can assume that other obvious nicknames saw the same doom. Kevin Pillar, instead of “Superman,” used “Pill.” Osuna didn’t use “Osuna Matata,” instead featuring “No Panic.”

On another interesting note, Major League Baseball is introducing a new “evolution” logo for Player’s Weekend, which looks as if it features Jose Bautista’s signature leg kick.

Jay Bruce, traded to Cleveland last night, drew interest from the New York Yankees prior to his trade, multiple reports confirm. Jon Heyman tweets that the Yankees were in on Bruce and planned to pay part of his remaining contract, but Cleveland is set to pay the rest of Bruce’s contract.

The Yankees also offered multiple prospects in addition to cash in the deal, but failed to get the trade done.

Injury Updates:

• Miguel Montero took batting practice with the team prior to yesterday’s game. Next, Montero will begin running, and the Blue Jays don’t expect him to miss much more than 10 days. Of course, that’s what they said with Joe Smith, too.
• Troy Tulowitzki is expected to miss the entire 2017 season, but John Gibbons doesn’t expect any lingering effects in 2018.
• Steve Pearce’s knee was drained last night but played in yesterday’s game because of his prior success against New York’s starter, Masahiro Tanaka.

The Blue Jays lost 11-5 to the Yankees last night, and it wasn’t pretty. Nick Tepesch, up from triple-A for the spot start, pitched 4.1 innings, allowing five earned runs and walking one while striking out four. Tepesch gave up three home runs, including back-to-back blasts in the top of the second.

Toronto made it close in the bottom of the sixth when a Ryan Goins double and Josh Donaldson single brought the score to 6-5, but New York pulled away and won the battle.

Looking to win the series, the Blue Jays will pit Marco Estrada against Sonny Gray, making just his second start in a Yankees uniform. Estrada has pitched at least seven innings in both of his last two starts, the first time he’s done so since September 19th and 25th, 2016.

Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkColley. Apparently, Rogers Centre has foul netting instead of a foul pole because of a parking garage directly below the stadium. “Can’t put a in a pole due to underground parking below,” Tim Langton, the Blue Jays PA guy said. Who would’ve thunk.