Aliens can help give NY Mets pitcher Luke Weaver a nickname for his changeup

The New York Mets have a Ghost Fork and an Airbender. Luke Weaver is hoping his changeup can get a good nickname, too.

This is where we put our heads together and try to get creative. Weaver is a unique baseball personality and probably spent the night listing out potential nicknames for his pitch.

The changeup isn’t exactly the fiercest weapon. It’s more of a way to embarrass hitters, catching them off-guard or flail. There are surely plenty of ways to use this to help nickname Weaver’s pitch, which held batters to a .129 batting average last year with a 43.9% whiff rate. Thanks to his surname, Weaver, there are some directions to go down. I’ve chosen to go back to the 1980s.

Let’s thank Aliens for some inspiration for naming Luke Weaver’s changeup (and more)

Aliens were in the news again this week with Barack Obama and Donald Trump discussing the topic without saying anything of substance. You know what this means: disclosure day is coming and the World Series gets canceled before the Mets can win it all.

It’s not those true extraterrestrials who’ll help us here. Weaver’s nickname comes straight from the 1986 film, Aliens.

One of the few sequels regarded as being as good, if not better, than the original, the film stars Sigourney Weaver which quickly leads us to the connection.

Featured in several parts of the film, but most notably in a final battle scene is the Caterpillar P-5000. It’s that large yellow bug-like machine Ellen Ripley (Weaver) goes inside to fight off the Queen. P-5000 is one suggestion for the changeup. It sounds robotic and our Weaver can have the P stand for anything he’d like while paying homage to the Ridley Scott film.

If not that, Aliens provides us with another idea. Bill Paxton’s iconic “Game Over Man” line seems apropos to a pitch with such devastating side effects for pitchers. The argument against this is that Weaver mixed in his fastballs and cutter almost as much to eliminate batters.

Sigourney Weaver is known for a lot more than the Alien film series. Her presence in Ghostbusters can provide us with some ideas. The Keymaster? The Carpathian? Zuul? All seem fair game for Weaver’s changeup.

Luke Weaver was born in 1993 so how much of an impact any of these 1980s classics had on him. If 1999’s Galaxy Quest is more in line with his filmography, “Omega 13” is a unique name relevant to the plot. It’s nerdy enough sounding for someone’s changeup. Why not Weaver?

Nicknames tend to come naturally. Some of the most memorable come from Todd Frazier thinking you look like an arctic animal. Dwight Gooden’s “Lord Charles” for his curveball will be tough top.