For SS I would add in Troy Tulowitzki althought he won't be in the majors for probably another 2 years.

Seems the Blue Jays can pick 'em. Only five men (other than Mr. Overbay) have made the big leagues with the first name "Lyle". They are:

Lyle Bigbee ('20 Athletics)
Lyle Tinning ('33 Cubs)
Lyle Judy ('35 Cardinals)
Lyle Luttrell ('56 Senators)
Lyle Mouton ('97 White Sox)

gv27: The trend continues with the Jays other big aquisitions this year, A.J. and B.J.

There have only been 3 other A.J.'s to grace the MLB:
A.J. Hinch (1998-2004)
A.J. Pierzynski (1998-present)
A.J. Sager (1994-1998)

As for Mr. Ryan, he joins three other immortals who played in the majors:
B.J. Surhoff (1987-present)
B.J. Upton (2004)
B.J. Waszgis (2000)

Baseball Reference does not provide any other surnames for Ryan or Burnett (as in "his mother Bee Honeycutt and his father Jay Honeycutt...Bee Jay...BJ," for example) that may have given way to their initials-as-a-real-name names. Baseball Reference is usually very good at including what the initials stand for, so I assume that B.J. and A.J. are straight from their birth certificates.

In looking at the lack of history in the names of recent Jays aquisitions, I started looking at the Jays roster and began to wonder if the first names of the Jays starters are rarer than players on other teams.

I figured it'd be unfair to ask that question of someone else and so I did a little (edit: in hindsight, it was lot of work) research and here's what I found (I took the 11 position players likely to get the most playing time, the closer and the rotation and compared it to the equivalent players of the Yankees).

Some rules that I just made up (and am backing up with this gun from grandfather's arsenal [anyone here love Eddie Izzard?])include that the spelling has to be exact, no last names allowed and the name must be official (for example, I used Alexis, not Alex. This helps in his case, but hurts in Vernon's case.) Note: I wasn't sure what to do with Doc as his real name is Harry...so I looked up the rules that I made up and noticed rule 1.1.3, that we were to use the player's official first name.

Jays

Position Players:
Russ (0)
Aaron (21)
Troy (11)
Lyle (5)
Gregg (1)
Vernon (17)
Reed (0)
Alexis (2)
Corey (4)
Frank (26)
Shea (0)

Closer:
B.J. (3)

Rotation:
Harry (167) Roy (25)
A.J. (3)
Gustavo (2)
Josh (4)
Theodore (33)


Yankees

Positional Players:

Alexander (45)
Derek (11)
Robinson (3)
Jason (66)
Gary (72)
Johnny (13)
Hideki (1)
Jorge (16)
Bernabe (0)
Miguel (15)
George [Andy Phillips] (419)

Closer:
Mariano (1)

Rotation:
Randy (22)
Mike (363)
Shawn (13)
Carl (17)
Aaron (21)

Totals:
Jays- 233
Yanks- 1098

Well, maybe Mr. Phillips and Mr. Mussina skewed the numbers too much? Well even without those two, the total comes to 316.

So the Jays actually have a pretty rare roster of names compared to a random team. I know, I know, the Yankees may be on the other extreme and this whole may be inaccurate, but there is no way I'm doing another team...try sorting through hundreds of Harrys and Henrys and tell them apart, it's hard!

If I were a prophet, I'd say this is a good omen for the Jays, I mean what's more rare than winning the World Series? In keeping with the coincidences, prophets had exceedingly rare first names...not too many Habakkuk's in the Majors.