The Indistinguishable Wilsons
I don’t know if you’re as tired as I am of seeing box scores with the incredibly unhelpful notation:
SS Wilson, J
But in case you’re struggling to tell them apart, here’s a little game to play. For each of the following numbers, guess whether it belongs to Jack or Josh (Mariners statistics only in all cases).
Batting average: .224
Doubles: 5
At bats: 107
Sacrifice bunts: 2
Runs: 11
Walks: 6
Hits: 24
Double plays grounded into: 2
Plate appearances: 116
The correct answer? All of the above. That’s right – in addition to their similar names, the Wilson boys have managed to put together impressively similar batting lines. It doesn’t mean much, and Jack is still the better defensive shortstop (sample sizes are too small for metrics to mean much for Josh, although UZR likes him as a Mariner, not so much two years ago with Tampa Bay). And as far as the stars aligning in the heavens, it’s got nothing on Tuiasosopo’s maiden home run. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting coincidence.
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The title for this entry should have been, Single White Mariner.
Meet Jack, who’s lived most everywhere,
From Zanzibar to Barclay Square.
But Josh’s only seen the sight.
A girl can see from Brooklyn Heights —
What a crazy pair!
But they’re cousins,
Identical cousins all the way.
One pair of matching bookends,
Different as night and day.
And don’t they both live in Pittsburgh? I was listening to a pre-game show the other day and Josh was talking about owning season’s tickets to the Steelers.
Josh was born in Pittsburgh and was drafted out of high school there. I don’t know whether they both currently live there, but the connection does exist.
Wow. I suddenly hate him.
I don’t even want to know what the statistical probability of these stats are, but dang.
This is so bizarre. I love it!
Any way they can go on the 25 man roster as J. Wilson, and job-share?
That sounds sort of like a trick the Phillies supposedly pulled back in the 1940s. As I understood it, they had a G. Hamner on their roster drafted away by another team (the Browns?), who thought they were getting Granville “Granny” Hamner, a highly regarded prospect who would go on to be an All-Star middle infielder for a few years. In reality, they were getting his older brother Garvin with a career batting average of .198.
Mike, something like that happened within the last ten years (with the White Sox, I think). As one of the lesser parts of a multi-player trade, the team thought they were getting a decent prospect who was named something common like Steve Johnson. The other team, however, had two Steve Johnsons in their system, and the acquiring team asked for the wrong one, who was a non-prospect.
Blowers making the homerun call was funny. This is just eerie.