The Staten Island Yankees of the New York-Penn League, a short season Single-A affiliate of the major league team by the same name, is currently in the process of rebranding. They announced their forthcoming name change back in June.

Like several other minor league teams in recent years, the Staten Island club opened the rebranding process to fans and accepted nickname suggestions. They received over 2,000 of them. On Thursday, the team announced the five finalists. They are ... interesting. I won't call them bad, but they're interesting. Here are the five:

  • Staten Island Bridge Trolls
  • Staten Island Heroes
  • Staten Island Killer Bees
  • Staten Island Pizza Rats
  • Staten Island Rock Pigeons

So ... yeah. Those are the potential team names. All five has some sort of connection to New York and Staten Island in particular. Bridge Trolls refers to the many bridges in the area. Killer Bees is a reference to "Staten Island's musical and cultural impact," which is a fancy way of saying the Wu-Tang Clan.

Pizza Rats? That comes from a video that went viral earlier this year, showing a rat dragging a slice of piece down into the subway. I won't embed the video, but you can watch it here. I choose to believe the rat was Master Splinter on his way to feed his four mutant turtles.

What do the players think? So far Pizza Rats is the early favorite in the clubhouse:

Fan voting for the new team name is now open and will be for another few weeks. You can vote right here. The only correct answer is Killer Bees, by the way.