Bring the past back to life.
Nicknames take a player beyond just their job on the field and into a larger world. A nickname is memorable. It’s remarkable. It’s a way to create a new honor outside the formal bounds of the baseball diamond. And baseball has a lot of nicknames, not confined to Red Sox, some are very hard to forget:
Big Papi.
The Freak.
The Splendid Splinter.
Death to Flying Things.
The Password.
The Big Unit.
Country Breakfast.
Pronk.
The Greek God of Walks.
The Muddy Chicken (well, maybe not).
Sam Miller wrote about the 20 rules of baseball nicknames and while there is good stuff there I’m going off script a bit. For Ceddanne Chipper Nicasio Marte Rafaela (yes, he is literally named Chipper but it’s probably too soon to use that nickname again.) the easy thing to do would be turn Rafaela into Raffy. However, the Sox already have one of those in Rafael “Raffy” Devers. And much like Dustin Pedroia not being able to go by Pedro like he did in high school and college because of, well, The Pedro (you know, Martinez), Rafaela is left in the cold.
But he’s a good fit for a nickname.
First, he’s a good player with a tremendous skill: defense. But he’s versatile enough that he can play in the infield. He has speed but he’s not racking up gaudy stolen base totals. He’s got power but he won’t be in the Home Run Derby. He’s the first of the offensive side of the youth movement to cement himself on the major league roster.
And like we saw on Wednesday against the Los Angels Angels Who Play in Anaheim he’s got a flare for the dramatic.
CEDDANNE FOR THE WIN!
And it’s not just one moment. Would you believe that Ceddenne Rafaela ranks third among Red Sox hitters in Win Probability Added (WPA)? Here’s a brief reminder about the stat from FanGraphs.
Win Probability Added (WPA) captures the change in Win Expectancy from one plate appearance to the next and credits or debits the player based on how much their action increased their team’s odds of winning. Most sabermetric statistics are context neutral — they do not consider the situation of a particular event or how some plays are more crucial to a win than others. While wOBA rates all home runs as equal, we know intuitively that a home run in the third inning of a blowout is less important to that win than a home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of a close game. WPA captures this difference.
So it’s pretty simple overall: good things are valuable and good things + good timing are more valuable.
Entering Wednesday — before his latest heroics — Rafaela was third with 0.22 WPA this season trialing Devers (0.73) and Rob Refsnyder (0.51). And this is good! For all the talk of “they should trade/demote Rafaela” you may see online or hear cranky radio hosts or callers mention there really is data to help Alex Cora, the player’s manger, side with the players.
There is also a Clutch stat based on WPA that measures “how much better or worse a player does in high leverage situations than he would have done in a context neutral environment.” Per FanGraphs “It also compares a player against himself, so a player who hits .300 in high leverage situations when he’s an overall .300 hitter is not considered clutch.”
Here, Ceddanne is the leader of the 2025 Boston Red Sox with a 0.46 mark. Followed, remarkably, by Trevor Story (0.19) and David Hamilton & Carlos Narváez (Each 0.16).
So what’s the nickname? A modern twist on a classic: Nuf Cedd, after the original Michael T. “Nuf Ced” McGreevy. He was the leader of the Royal Rooters, a bar owner, and of course mentioned in the Dropkick Murphys song Tessie.
Tessie, Nuff Ced McGreevy shouted, We’re not here to mess around.
Here the traditional “enough said” is keeping the short, stylized “nuf” but adding a second “d’ to “Cedd” because Ceddanne, to whom the nickname could be bestowed, has two ds.
It’s based in history, taking a classic Red Sox-aligned name and bringing it back into modern use!
Author’s Note: I have been informed by my wife that this is an absolutely terrible nickname and she is googling for alternatives as I write this. As I am informed, Curaçao, where Rafaela was born, was nicknamed by the Portuguese Ilha da Curação (Island of Healing) because their sailors often suffered from scurvy but on the island ate fruit rich in vitamin C. Per Wikipedia this is a also possibly a bit of a fable. But Curaçao is now Dutch (and he was born in Willemstad named after William of Orange) and the Dutch love orange…so Ceddanne the Orange?