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?