MLB Changes 2015

[tubby34]

Have we heard anything further regarding Diamond Era caps for primaries?

The AFL's FO is saying the Diamond Era caps will be the MLB primaries in 2015. Don't know if that will end up being the case but they seemed pretty sure of it.

where did you read or hear this at? very curious!

The mets new road alt is a Diamond Era, as well as their blue/orange Alternate.

[TVIXX]

Have we heard anything further regarding Diamond Era caps for primaries?

The AFL's FO is saying the Diamond Era caps will be the MLB primaries in 2015. Don't know if that will end up being the case but they seemed pretty sure of it.

where did you read or hear this at? very curious!

The mets new road alt is a Diamond Era, as well as their blue/orange Alternate.

How you know?

[Packid]

Have we heard anything further regarding Diamond Era caps for primaries?

The AFL's FO is saying the Diamond Era caps will be the MLB primaries in 2015. Don't know if that will end up being the case but they seemed pretty sure of it.

where did you read or hear this at? very curious!

The mets new road alt is a Diamond Era, as well as their blue/orange Alternate.

Do you have a source on the new road hat being a DE?

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

the Mets will probably have helmets that don't match their caps most games. That's inexcusable.

I can live with dropping the whites. Just eliminate the road alt jersey and cap, eliminate the home alt cap, and drop camos permanently. They just can't keep from messing up and bastardizing their look.

I really wish this was on more people's radars. Helmets really ought to be "hard" versions of the hats. Teams should never have them differ, particularly with base coaches wearing helmets. (I suppose they'd differ on stars/stripes days, which I don't think should exist, but that's a lost battle). That way teams would have, at most, two on-field caps. That, and the BP cap really should be enough.

You're right. It was the Brewers and Twins who started the practice of having a helmet that differed from the cap.

The Brewers had these caps:

...and this helmet:

...worn both home and on the road.

The Twins had these caps:

...and this helmet:

...worn both home and road.

That always bugged me.

[TheOldRoman]

I'd love to see the Nats add a cream/off-white home alt that is more blue in base color than red and uses that nice script Nationals that's found its way into every aspect of the identity EXCEPT the uniform:

Better yet, move the home jersey's placket piping to the neck and slap that beautiful script on the front. Then use a more standard block font and get rid of all road and alternate caps. Boom. Nats fixed.

[TheOldRoman]

The Mets can't leave well enough alone. After finally looking like the Mets again a few years back, they are already messing things up. I'm surprised the Mets pulled the plug on the snow whites. I know some people thought those were the best home jerseys to distance themselves from the Yankees, but it always seemed wrong to me to lose the stripes after wearing them for 50+ years and winning two championships in them. Either way, I'm glad they made a call and settled on one home jersey.

As for the rest of this, blergh. They should have one cap for games. The road alternate cap is bad and unnecessary (as is the matching jersey), the home alternate cap is awful, and they need to lose the camo. Maybe worst of all, they will have one set of batting helmets. Assuming they'll wear alts on the road close to half the time, and accounting for them wearing home alts and camo bunches, the Mets will probably have helmets that don't match their caps most games. That's inexcusable.

I can live with dropping the whites. Just eliminate the road alt jersey and cap, eliminate the home alt cap, and drop camos permanently. They just can't keep from messing up and bastardizing their look.

I really wish this was on more people's radars. Helmets really ought to be "hard" versions of the hats. Teams should never have them differ, particularly with base coaches wearing helmets. (I suppose they'd differ on stars/stripes days, which I don't think should exist, but that's a lost battle). That way teams would have, at most, two on-field caps. That, and the BP cap really should be enough.

The ridiculous part is, batting helmets cost about $60 or so, so it would be a drop in the bucket for teams to buy an additional set. Sell 50 additional caps and you've paid for an entire set of helmets. The idea that it's too much of a pain for equipment managers to deal with is bull. In college football these dumbass teams have equipment managers juggling 5-6 sets of 100 helmets (each of which costs about $500). An equipment manager of a freaking professional baseball team can easily pack a second box with 20 batting helmets in it. If they can't be bothered to buy matching helmets, they shouldn't be allowed to wear the caps. There's no excuse for the Twins, Indians, Athletics and Reds to have a different look batting vs. fielding for every single road game. If it's important enough to make a cap part of your uniform, it's important enough to match the helmets. And as you said, it would only apply to road and alt caps, not one-offs, which shouldn't even exist to begin with.

[erlovepuck]

Most will probably disagree but if they feel the need to have an alternate hat for the road blues why not a grey crown/blue bill cap like the royals wore in the late 90s?

Because that flavor of the month fad died in the 90's and with players wearing the pyjama look that would be head to toe grey.

We're talking about a cap being worn with the blue alt jersey so the uniform would not be head to toe grey. I'd chose that fad any day over the more recent one of making alternate caps with the same color crown and bill as the primary cap with a different or outlined logo. Red Sox hanging sox cap and the Pirates alt with the white outline come to mind.

[TheOldRoman]

Okay, I just realized now that the above post and other recent ones were by erlovepuck and not Tank. I'm used to Tank having that avatar.

And while I'm at it, what the hell happened to Admiral with his sometimes witty, always esoteric avatars and member titles? Blankness now? It's creeping me out.

[BigBubba]

I was really hoping the Mets' cap news would be the return of the blue button. The orange one sticks out like a sore thumb and looks brutal.

I'm happy with the essential merger of the two different home uniforms. The snow whites were good, but the pinstripes go with their history better. And there was no reason for the pinstripe uniforms to be cream instead of white.

The cap situation is a hot mess. They'll be wearing three different alt caps this year (because let's face it, they will bring out the Mr. Met one at some point during the season), which is three too many. That is the absolute definition of diluting and bastardizing your look.

Re: Padres. Brown is the way to go. I honestly don't care what you pair it with - yellow, orange, sand, light blue - I think they would all look fantastic (though yellow is my preference). Brown is such an underrated and versatile colour, however, it shouldn't be a dark "chocolate" shade, which would inevitably look black from a distance. The shade they used in the past was perfect.

[Phils Phan]

Mets changes:

Pinstripe jersey goes from cream to white, becomes primary home jersey. Pinstripe-less white is no more.

Add road alt cap -- blue with grey NY outlined in orange -- to be worn with blue alt road jersey. Regular cap still worn with greys.

Here's the link:

http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/mets/post/_/id/96099/mets-tweak-uniforms-for-2015?ex_cid=espnapi_public

So they get rid of the beautiful snow white uniforms, but keep the ugly camo. Fail.

Obviously the camo jersey is riduculous. But I say you're wrong about the plain white uniforms. The white unis always looked wrong on the Mets; they have been a pinstriped team since their beginning. It's nice that they have corrected the errors of the 1990s and 2000s and have ditched those things which do not fit what the Mets should look like: the black, the drop-shadow, and now the plain white uniforms.

I had read a rumour that said that they were restoring the cap button to blue. I am a little disappointed to read that that is not the case. The cap looks better as a solid blue with nothing breaking it up.

Still, despite that, this is another step in the right direction for the Mets.

Yet they're creating errors far worse.

Not really. The new caps are annoying; I agree with The Old Roman that they should have one cap for all games. But the new alt caps aren't as egregious a break with the Mets' traditional look as the white uniforms were.

Apart from that, the only errors are the alt jerseys, which almost all teams have (and which no team needs). But at least those are aesthetically pleasing.

While the Mets are not in the perfect two-uniform / one-cap state, they are as close to that as they are ever going to get. Their current look is excellent, despite the flaws of the unneccesary alts and the ridiculous camo.

At least the white uniform looks good. The outlined NY logo is terrible, the logo itself is already a little cluttered as is so adding an outline makes it a complete mess. Also the new road hat is just terrible, it's basically gonna look like a thick grey logo with a random orange button. Awful.

You can't just brush off the alts because they're alts. They're still being worn in regular season games, fairly often in fact, and while MLB is plagued with crappy unnecessary alts that doesn't magically make it right for the Mets to do it. Also they have three alternates, more than most teams. And you certainly can't say they're all aesthetically pleasing. Yes the home alternate looks great when not paired with the terrible alt hat but the road is unnecessary and a big downgrade, and the camo uniform is simply HIDEOUS.

And just because the Mets are obviously never gonna go back to a normal amount of uniforms and hats absolute does not, in anyway mean we still can't complain how bad it looks. They look excellent when they wear the right uniforms and hat, but that's no excuse for looking like crap a lot of the time.

I am the last guy to be an apologist for alts; teams should have *a* home uniform and *a* road uniform. (The fact that this position can be taken as extreme is a sign of the warped norms of our current day.) And the fans should indeed complain about the presence of alts, especially about that terrible camo one.

Still, we have to be realistic; the Mets will never be rid of alt uniforms entirely. So the best we can hope for is that these alts don't disrupt the overall aesthetic of the team the way the black jerseys and the white uniforms did. The blue home and road alt jerseys, while unneccesary, are very attractive in their own right. No, they shouldn't be worn on the field; and, yes, they are worn far too often. But they are well executed, with orange-on-white lettering on the home jersey and grey-on-orange lettering on the road jersey.

Also, hats can be phased out during a season; we've seen any number of cases of that. So we can hope that the alt caps prove to be unpopular with the players and that they are ultimately abandoned. This is admittedly a longshot; but it is at least within the realm of reality -- unlike the complete abandonment of alt jerseys.

I'm not completely against alts for the Mets, I love their home blue. But that's ALL they should have. Just because pro teams are extremely money grubbing as a given doesn't mean we can't complain it's pathetic and dilutes the brand. In my opinion the road alt is terrible, the grey script with an orange outline blends together and it's just unnecessary. IMO this is far worse than having a Snow White alt. I'll admit that the alt unis and caps nowadays are better than the horrible black, and at least the home and roads are back to what they should be, but it still doesn't make it acceptable, and their black alts/caps are beyond Yankee-caliber compared to those abominal camo alts. I don't care if they're worn rarely, they're still worn in regular season games scattered throughout the whole year, and it's an absolute turd on the identity.

I will say though, I'm at least very glad they're removing the cream from the pinstripes. Sure it separated it from the Cubs pinstripes, but still, it's so much cleaner and more visually appealing.

[MNTwins]

the Mets will probably have helmets that don't match their caps most games. That's inexcusable.

I can live with dropping the whites. Just eliminate the road alt jersey and cap, eliminate the home alt cap, and drop camos permanently. They just can't keep from messing up and bastardizing their look.

I really wish this was on more people's radars. Helmets really ought to be "hard" versions of the hats. Teams should never have them differ, particularly with base coaches wearing helmets. (I suppose they'd differ on stars/stripes days, which I don't think should exist, but that's a lost battle). That way teams would have, at most, two on-field caps. That, and the BP cap really should be enough.

You're right. It was the Brewers and Twins who started the practice of having a helmet that differed from the cap.

The Brewers had these caps:

...

That always bugged me.

Bugged the hell out of me too. Also from '02 to '09 the Twins exclusively used the TC helmet home and away, despite the road 'M' cap.

[Phils Phan]

The cap situation is a hot mess. They'll be wearing three different alt caps this year (because let's face it, they will bring out the Mr. Met one at some point during the season), which is three too many.

If they they're stupid enough to bust out the Mr. Met hats it'll be four, it, the orange bill, the grey logo and the digitalized turd one. Plus the inevitable special event ones. Yet one helmet in total because they're cheap penny-pinching bastards.

[OnWis97]

the Mets will probably have helmets that don't match their caps most games. That's inexcusable.

I can live with dropping the whites. Just eliminate the road alt jersey and cap, eliminate the home alt cap, and drop camos permanently. They just can't keep from messing up and bastardizing their look.

I really wish this was on more people's radars. Helmets really ought to be "hard" versions of the hats. Teams should never have them differ, particularly with base coaches wearing helmets. (I suppose they'd differ on stars/stripes days, which I don't think should exist, but that's a lost battle). That way teams would have, at most, two on-field caps. That, and the BP cap really should be enough.

You're right. It was the Brewers and Twins who started the practice of having a helmet that differed from the cap.

The Brewers had these caps:

...

That always bugged me.

Bugged the hell out of me too. Also from '02 to '09 the Twins exclusively used the TC helmet home and away, despite the road 'M' cap.

In the 80s, the Twins had a red home cape and blue away cap and I think they only had a red helmet.

[TheOldRoman]

The 1982-86 White Sox used their road-style batting helmet at home. They have correctly reproduced the helmets to be worn with the throwbacks, but it still stands out as an error that they don't have a white front panel.

It really went off the rails with the Diamondbacks. Their first set featured four caps, but two batting helmets. But all caps featured the A logo, while the batting helmets had the D-snake. Dumb.

[BigBubba]

the Mets will probably have helmets that don't match their caps most games. That's inexcusable.

I can live with dropping the whites. Just eliminate the road alt jersey and cap, eliminate the home alt cap, and drop camos permanently. They just can't keep from messing up and bastardizing their look.

I really wish this was on more people's radars. Helmets really ought to be "hard" versions of the hats. Teams should never have them differ, particularly with base coaches wearing helmets. (I suppose they'd differ on stars/stripes days, which I don't think should exist, but that's a lost battle). That way teams would have, at most, two on-field caps. That, and the BP cap really should be enough.

You're right. It was the Brewers and Twins who started the practice of having a helmet that differed from the cap.

The Brewers had these caps:

...

That always bugged me.

Bugged the hell out of me too. Also from '02 to '09 the Twins exclusively used the TC helmet home and away, despite the road 'M' cap.

In the 80s, the Twins had a red home cape and blue away cap and I think they only had a red helmet.

Ah, yes. This was a world-class look IMO:

[Gothamite]

I'd love to see the Nats add a cream/off-white home alt that is more blue in base color than red and uses that nice script Nationals that's found its way into every aspect of the identity EXCEPT the uniform:

Better yet, move the home jersey's placket piping to the neck and slap that beautiful script on the front. Then use a more standard block font and get rid of all road and alternate caps. Boom. Nats fixed.

Oh, yeah.

[tubby34]

Have we heard anything further regarding Diamond Era caps for primaries?

The AFL's FO is saying the Diamond Era caps will be the MLB primaries in 2015. Don't know if that will end up being the case but they seemed pretty sure of it.

where did you read or hear this at? very curious!

The mets new road alt is a Diamond Era, as well as their blue/orange Alternate.

Do you have a source on the new road hat being a DE?

Yep- squalls my source.

And the picture shows a DE.

[aawagner011]

Here is a larger photo which clearly shows DE for both alternate hats in addition to the BP cap. I'm a big supporter of the DEs and want to pick up a Braves home cap in the DE material.

[BBTV]

I assume difference in blues is lighting. Home alt cap is ridiculous. Totally unnecessary. I don't mind the road cap so much, in fact I kinda like it. Doesn't mean it's necessary either though.

[damnyoutuesday]

Anyone wonder if the new Twins alternate hat with gold will be Diamond Era?