B-R name search
Posted by Andy on December 1, 2007
This isn't a stat post, but does relate to one of the features of the main B-R site. If you go to the search box on the main page (or any player or team page), did you know that you can shorten a player's name and still find him? Here's what I mean:
If you put in "mickey mantle" (without the quotes) it takes you right to The Mick's page.
But also if you put in "mick man" it also takes you to his page, because he's the only player with a first and last name combo that starts with those combinations of letters.
But if you put in "mickey ma", you actually get two players back: Mickey Mantle and Mickey Mahler.
If you do something silly like put in "mi ma", you get 176 hits.
I'm curious to find the fewest number of letters anybody can find tht gives the results of just one player (or umpire, manager, official, etc.) For example, I started with a guess of "x h", think of Xavier Hernandez. But that also brings up both Fran Healy and his uncle Francis Healy, both of whom had the middle name of Xavier. If you do "x x", you do get just one player: Xavier Rescigno, who comes up because his nickname was Mr. X, and the nickname is also queried when you search by name. (By the way, if you search by "mr", you get all the players who had a "Mr" nickname such as Mr. October (Reggie), Mr. November (Jeter), Mr. Angel (Tim Salmon), Mr. Chips (Johnny Hudson), Mr. Cub (If I need to tell you who that is, then you might as well stop reading this blog altogether,) not to mention Ron Mrozinski.
I think there are probably lots of two-letter initials that can yield just one player. My challenge is: can you find two consecutive letters that yield just one player? For example, "yaz" yields just Carl Yastrzemski (even though Yaz is just his nickname and his last name actually starts with "Yas".) But "ya" yields 89 players.
Who can you find uniquely using just two consecutive letters?
December 1st, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Q V equals Quilvio Veras
December 1st, 2007 at 12:28 pm
aw == Bob Locker
December 1st, 2007 at 12:33 pm
ps gets only one major leaguer (steve lyons, aka psycho), although it also gets a minor leaguer (grant psomas).
I think there might be a small bug in the searching, though; searching for 'av' yields a lot of alvarez's for no reason that I can discern.
December 1st, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Hmm... cz also only gets one major leaguer (Jim Czajkowski), although it yields five from the minors (three of whom might make it to the majors in the near future).
December 1st, 2007 at 12:39 pm
gs == Tony Gsell
Ok, this is fun, but I need to go back to more work-related stuff. :>
December 1st, 2007 at 12:56 pm
MM = Kevin Mmahat
December 1st, 2007 at 12:57 pm
ok, I have no willpower. Anyway, missed that Gsell never made the majors. rz also comes up with Marc Rzepczynski (another minor leaguer who could still make the majors).
December 1st, 2007 at 1:34 pm
another inspiration: xe => Dax Xenos Jones (this might be my second favorite sports name, now, after Zarley Zalapsky)
December 1st, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Q P = a minor leaguer named Quenten Patteson from the beginning of this decade.
December 1st, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Regarding #3 above, there is no bug. If you look at the bottom of any player's page, Sean has included common misspellings of names so that searches will still find them. So he's included "Avarez" for example, for each Alvarez, which is why a search of "Av" brings them up.
This name search flexibility was one of the things that first attracted me to B-R 6 or 7 years ago when I first started using it. Our man Sean, in addition to all his math & stats knowledge, understands a lot about user friendliness.
December 1st, 2007 at 6:14 pm
So it's a feature, not a bug. I always hear that from programmers (heck, I use it myself from time to time :). That does make a lot of sense, though.
And jy == Jye Pitt
December 1st, 2007 at 6:18 pm
had to get one more:
ek == Michael Ekstrom
December 1st, 2007 at 7:52 pm
uj = Jerry Ujdur. I got a major leaguer. I can stop.
December 2nd, 2007 at 10:44 am
fj == Randy Fjeld (alas, only made it to rookie ball)