The Phillies are Historically Bad at Social Media

Today, for reasons unknown to humans and bots, someone in the Phillies PR or marketing department decided that, in the absence of any relevant offseason news thus far, they would compose a blog post about where Phillies names place on the list of top 2014 baby names:

Baby, It’s Cold Outside. Yes, it’s cold outside. Actually, freezing this AM. But our focus is on “baby” for the moment.

The results are in… and the top baby names of 2014, as reported by babycenter.com, are here! Sure, Jackson is sitting pretty atop the list of most popular boy names for the year but I know what you’re thinking: Where do your favorite Phillies’ names rank?

No, that’s not what I was thinking.

Let’s take a look!

Please no.

Now, you might be thinking: OK, if Chase or Cole were, like, the top baby name in Philadelphia, that would be a neat little story. Neat. So which is it?! Well, it’s neither. In fact, the only Phillie name in the top 10 is Jacob (9), which I suppose works for Jake Diekman. And then there’s Benjamin (16), James (18), Ryan (24) and so on.

Besides the obvious observation that this is quite possibly the most embarrassing use of social media since #AskNeal, we must feature just some of the commentary in all its glory.

For James:

Coming in at a respectable #18 on the top 100 list, James Calvin Rollins continues to have a pretty fantastic year.

Why is this respectable? Respectable in relation to what? Is 18 even any good? James came in seventh in 1991— why the drop off? Should Jims be concerned? I have a friend named Jim, I wonder how he’s holding up today. Poor guy. Kids born today are going to view him the way we view Marlas and Bethanys.

From Dominic with an I (40):

Yes, Domonic Brown may buy an “O” instead of an “I” for his name but it still ranks at #40 on this year’s list. (Did you get the Wheel of Fortune reference? Maybe?)

Yeah, um, we got it. Also note that spelling it with an O is weird and completely different than using the more typical I. I(!) demand an investigation.

From Jonathan:

58’s given name ranks #71 on this list. Not too shabby for the Phillies closer.

I can’t. The Phillies are so bad at social media I’m not even sure how to make fun of it. While the Eagles are churning out high-quality pump-up videos narrated by Bradley Cooper, our baseball team is contorting itself to write anything on its website that doesn’t paint the organization as a rudderless mess filled with aging vestiges of yesterday… sort of like all those Jims out there.