DustDevil61

Color me surprised. Brandiose showing a rare case of restraint! The obscure references to Worcester (the Smiley Face Batter and the subtle heart in the W) aren't shoehorned in and are actually legitimate!

I may not a betting man, nor do I have a farm, but if either of those were true, I would bet the deed to the farm on this. #EasyMoney

I don’t have the technological wherewithal to pull it off, but someone REALLY needs to do a Brandiose logo and name randomizer picking from a selection in each category: grimace/smirk (grimasmirk?), ornate eyes, a cylindrical bat-shaped object, a creature/object to anthropomorphize, and an adjective.

The colors are nice and fitting for a team based in Missoula (IIRC aside from Great Falls no Pioneer League team has worn green, and even then the Voyagers mostly use it as trim), but everything else checks off the list of Brandiose cliches. Large, jewel-like eyes? Check Comic book-like toothy smirk? Mascot that, at least on the surface, has no ties to the team name? Check. Plethora of logos? Check. City nickname word mark? Check.

Me too, though their logos needed some work. I think an older Missoula team used the name Timberjacks…if they went with that I’d be cool with it.

I don’t ever see it coming any closer to reality than this (especially with Portland and Las Vegas our there), but a few MLB fans in Utah have started the hashtag #MLBtoSLC and one local graphic designer made a quick mock-up of what the “Salt Lake Athletics” would look like: And for the fun of it, he also made a mock-up of the “Salt Lake A’zz.” His thoughts—and those who responded to him—are exactly as you would think: Again, I don’t ever see it happening, but fun to think about nonetheless.

The name’s a mouthful (Huntsville Trash Pandas or Rocket City Raccoons would’ve done just fine) and I can’t see any other reason for the head-tail logo to exist other than to see how close the designers could get to making a logo that resembled a sperm cell, but the rest of the package works well for what it represents.

Seeing this potential Frontier/Can-Am League reminds me when the Golden Baseball League merged with the Northern League and ULB around 2010...that didn’t end well for anyone and ultimately spread teams far too wide. Since we’re talking Indy baseball at the moment, a new independent league is planning to start up in 2020 with a similar geographic footprint to that of the Western and Golden Baseball Leagues: the Western Association of Professional Baseball, or WAPB. They haven’t announced much yet, though they have said that they are going to announce the 8 charter members in the next few weeks and that they are going to have a schedule similar to short-season MiLB leagues (mid-June to early September). FWIW, I do like the league logo (which I can’t directly post here, but is found in greater detail here.)

The weakest of the bunch is probably St. Louis’, but I’ve heard worse than Battlehawks.

All of these teams have great logos. I’m loving the Dragons name and colors for Seattle, as well as the Oilers callback with the Roughnecks name for Houston. Los Angeles’ name is meh (and the monogram is lacking in anything referring to a Wildcat), but that’s an awesome monogram.

If I were ever talented enough to play as a pro reliever/closer, I’d be heavily inclined to go with 86. Same goes for being a goalie in hockey, given that the NHL (and minor leagues) doesn’t (don’t) allow players to wear 0 or 00 last time I checked.

The Utah Grizzlies updated their jerseys for this upcoming 2019-20 season, and while it needs a claw hem stripe (or any hem stripe, really) and to be primarily green, IMO they’re better than the last set: Of course, I’m probably not the only one who thinks they got it right the fir, er, second time:

I’d also like to see higher numbers (70-99) in general used throughout the bigs. IIRC there were 4 numbers never used by a Major League player at the start of the 2019 season (80, 86, 89, and 92) until Minnesota’s Ryan Eades took up 80 earlier this year.

It looks like the finalist names of the soon-to-be-former New Orleans Baby Cakes (sorry for the fans, but not for the name) are slowly being revealed. First up, the Wichita River Riders: I think I speak for the forum when I say that I’m glad they’re not going with Brandiose.

It only makes sense. I’m not looking at a map at the moment, but I bet that MLB would invoke an Astros-in-the-AL situation* for the Montreal Expos v2.0, keeping them within spitting distance of Toronto. (*IIRC the switch was made, at least in part, to help cut travel costs for the Rangers and the rest of the AL West when they come into the state of Texas.)

Just give it another 2-3 years and the NHL and Coyotes will be looking for a new owner but won’t be going anywhere. At this rate, the Yotes will outlive us all.

Also note: The Detroit/Utah game also appears to be a color-on-color matchup, and it seems that the Jazz have been wearing their green jerseys (when they have one) at home on or around St. Patrick’s Day for longer than I expected.

I think I still prefer the Chargers’ now-current color balance of Powder Blue/Gold/White/Navy (notwithstanding the organization’s repeated flipping off of San Diego since leaving), but this was by all accounts a sneaky good look, which made minimal use of gold but placed it in a way that it still stood out and helped the white pop. Ignoring the colors between the two, I think this jersey is better-designed than today’s. If the NFL ever drops the one-helmet rule, I’d be inclined to use this uniform as a throwback.

The Tucson Roadrunners unveiled a faux back of sorts, going with a black alternate that’s based on the Coyotes’ initial set: I really like the pairing of the Sedona Red and Purple (as well as the Roadrunners’ regular colors of Sedona Red, Black, and Copper), though the color balance needs some work.

Ah, yes, the Bull in a Blender...

Some of Brandiose’s (generally earlier) identities are good or at least decent. Lehigh Valley is one of them, as is the California League’s Inland Empire 66ers IMO (despite the mascot-swinging-an-object-shaped-like-a-baseball-bat that’s become one of their crutches). I’d also say that, all in all, the El Paso Chihuahuas is decent. I also believe they (or their predecessor Plan B Studios) created the incredible-yet-far-too-shortly-lived Pioneer League’s Casper Ghosts identity. However, it was around the El Paso unveiling that it became apparent that they started to use the same copy-and-paste elements, particularly the triangular smirk off to the side of the mascot’s face, the large, comic-book-or-anime-esque eyes, bulked-up arms, and so forth, combined with their focus on names for shock value, that they jumped the shark for me.

I think this gif pretty much sums up the Zephyrs/Baby Cakes ownership with this whole Baby Cakes rebranding and subsequent Wichita relocation saga a mere 3 years later:

Does this mean that, if the Colorado Springs Pioneer League team becomes the Rocky Mountain Oysters, that their ballpark becomes known as the "Scrotium" or just the "Ballsack?" If so, you heard it here first.

It's good, but I would replace either one of the logos with the duck holding a branch logos with something different. Maybe a duck's foot? Then again, a duck's foot in the third logo from the left wouldn't look too bad, either. Either that, or at least give the duck a different expression to use in another logo or two.

Why not just go with Halloween colors full time? The team's name is "Bats," after all. They can go back to Black and Purple, and possibly add Orange trim. Don't get me wrong, the logos are great, but the current colors are a little less than inspiring.