Many of you know this already, but it bears repeating: If you care at all about baseball uniform numbers, the great @NumbersMLB Twitter account is an essential resource, providing real-time coverage of the uni-numerical scene. Now that the regular season is over they’ve compiled a few fun infographics for us.
Let’s start with the 12 players who wore at least three (and in one case four) different uni numbers in 2023:
The conclusion of the regular season is upon us, and with it, we present the list of esteemed players to have donned three or more jersey numbers in the 2023 regular season. pic.twitter.com/UuwlAFmdZ3
— MLB Jersey Numbers (@NumbersMLB) October 2, 2023
Jared Shuster deserves extra credit there, because he managed to wear three different numbers for the same team.
Next up are the five teams that managed to assign the same number to three different players in the course of the season (Shuster appears in this one as well):
Next, the jersey numbers to have been assigned three times over the course of the season. pic.twitter.com/wGdY7grOvP
— MLB Jersey Numbers (@NumbersMLB) October 2, 2023
Note that the Brewers managed to assign two different numbers three times apiece!
Last but not least, we have the 36 players who wore a number that had never been issued before by their team:
Finally, the players to have made history for their franchises this season by being the first wearer of a given jersey number. pic.twitter.com/JNbmW1gjz7
— MLB Jersey Numbers (@NumbersMLB) October 2, 2023
The teams filling in the most numbers on their “never issued before” bingo card this year were the Yankees (five new numbers) and the Dodgers and Reds (four numbers apiece).
Big thanks to @NumbersMLB for compiling all of this!
I’d imagine the Brewers situation was a case of convenience. They probably already had a bunch of jerseys made with those numbers and just slapped a new name on the back.
Please tell me I’m not the only one bothers by the inconsistent use of home and road unis in these graphics.
NumbersMLB does it based on the uniform the team will wear on the day the number announcement is made.
Hi there, NumbersMLB team member here! What Charlie Steele said is correct – if we know what jersey a team is wearing or will wear on a given day, we will use that for the graphic for as much accuracy as possible – great example here is José Caballero getting called up by Seattle on a Sunday, hence the use of the Sunday retro cream look. In situations where we don’t know, we just go with educated guesses. And then for these year-end round-ups, we use the graphics already on file instead of having our art guy remake everything.
Great info, Eric. Thanks for chiming in, and for all the invaluable work that you and your colleagues do!
That’s actually cool. That info really does change how I feel about the graphics. Thanks!
As a yankees fan, it is so weird seeing so many players wearing numbers in the 80s and 90s. I’ve gotten used to Judge’s 99, but it seems like every new guy that comes in is wearing eighty-something or ninety-something. Obviously a lot of this is because the history of the Yanks and retiring pretty much every single digit number, and a lot of the normal numbers being taken.
I was actually surprised to hear that the Yankees topped the “never issued before” list – I would have assumed they already used up more of their numbers than anyone else.
I expect the Yankees to have to go into the three digit territory pretty soon…