If Your Birthday is August 26th...

 

...you share it a couple of players with distinctive first names. Ranger Suarez joins Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler, Kyle Gibson and Noah Syndergaard in the Phillies rotation.  An outstanding fielder, he has a chance to become the first Philadelphia pitcher since Steve Carlton to win a gold glove.

He's also the first major league player named Ranger...while

Elvis Andrus is the second to sport that first name. (Elvis Peña, who played 25 games with Rockies and Brewers in 2000 and 2001, was the first.)

This Elvis hasn't left the building, but he's changed homes twice in the past year and half... First, when his longtime team the Rangers traded him to the A's.  More recently, when he signed with the White Sox after being released by Oakland.

David Price, the talented lefthander who's starred mainly for the Rays and Red Sox -- winning 15 or more games six times -- but until 2018, had struggled mightily in the post-season. Sent from Boston to the Dodgers as a salary dump in the Mookie Betts deal, he's enjoying a productive season in Dave Roberts' bullpen.

Morgan Ensburg was one of the Astros' power hitters during the decade of the 2000s. The California native put up his best numbers in 2005, when his 36 homers and 101 RBI helped him finished fourth for NL MVP.

We've got a couple of players-turned-broadcasters:

Ricky Bottalico, best known for spending seven of his 12 big league seasons in the Phillies bullpen. These days, he's an outspoken member of the Phils pre- and post-game TV crew.

Alex Trevino played parts of 13 seasons in the major leagues, but was only a regular with the 1982 Reds. Slugging was not his niche --  he holds the Mets franchise record for the most at bats without a home run (733). Alex has built a far more prolific second career -- he's spent more than a quarter-century on the Astros' Spanish-language broadcast team. That assignment  has earned him a spot on the club's Wall of Honor.

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