MLB Changes 2017

[Andrew_Gamer_NZP]

3 hours ago, BJ Sands said:

Did The Show add any new throwbacks or is it the same junk they've had the last few years?

 

I'm not sure but their stream yesterday showed every uniform in the game.  They also added every uniform in the style guide. So the Nationals new alt, the Royals new alt and the Diamondbacks alts are all in the game plus others this year.

 

Here's a link to the stream.

 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/124243526

 

At 17:50 is when they start talking about and showing the uniforms.

[SilverBullet1929]

4 hours ago, BJ Sands said:

Did The Show add any new throwbacks or is it the same junk they've had the last few years?

Same ones if I'm not mistaken. Or at least I didn't notice any new ones. Some are fine, some are odd choices. Like the Reds, no clue why they wouldn't have something from the 70's. Instead they have stuff from like the early 1900's. So odd.

[BJ Sands]

6 minutes ago, SilverBullet1929 said:

Same ones if I'm not mistaken. Or at least I didn't notice any new ones. Some are fine, some are odd choices. Like the Reds, no clue why they wouldn't have something from the 70's. Instead they have stuff from like the early 1900's. So odd.

Bugs me that they totally botch the Cubs. They use the 80s throwbacks (meh) but use red numbers on the home and gray pants on the road, both wrong. Then they use old throwbacks that are plain white and gray. Why?

[WSU151]

18 minutes ago, BJ Sands said:

Bugs me that they totally botch the Cubs. They use the 80s throwbacks (meh) but use red numbers on the home and gray pants on the road, both wrong. Then they use old throwbacks that are plain white and gray. Why?

 

The '82 Cubs uni (on the selection screen at about 18:20) has white pants on the road.  At least a lot more white than the other road pants.

 

Not sure why the Reds and Pirates have 1910s throwbacks when most fans have better memories of 80s/90s looks.  

 

The Madden-esque selection screen (with mix and match incorporated) is far better than their old screen, which had been used for years.

[Silent Wind of Doom]

On 2/20/2017 at 0:55 AM, WavePunter said:

To address specifically the issues you outlined here:

I included silver with the Indians because I hadn't realized they dropped it.. Perhaps they dropped it because they didn't want a trim element color added to the palette, so they went with the most ubiquitous, fair game, neutral color as an option to remove the needless silver.. 

The Rays went with the color that pops best on navy (of the two options), just like the cardinals and rangers..

And for the A's, the cap that shows how well yellow pops on green debuted in roughly 94 if I recall correctly.. The primary cap has featured a white monogram since the KC days if I'm not mistaken.. Again, because it simply is more visible.. (And I'm pretty sure the same goes for the tigers, only the orange D was introduced much earlier than the A's yellow A, but still significantly later than the white D)..

I think the primary reason here is that white is the universal background for everything.. When you design a new logo, you start with a white piece of paper.. I'd argue that the Cubs logo you mentioned earlier is white, not because it isn't negative space, but because it's a patch that was sewn onto the jerseys, and the patch was designed on a white background, and thus created with a white twill backing.. 

 

But how does silver get in but white not despite them being used the same amount?  If this is an argument of the use and ubiquity dictating what is and isn't on the palette, then white should be in if silver was.  We can't say that a color isn't in just because of the color it is.

 

On 2/20/2017 at 4:05 AM, Ben in LA said:

 

Precisely

 

On 2/20/2017 at 8:59 PM, SilverBullet1929 said:

I thought about this but to the best of my knowledge the Brewers don't combine their identities at the same time. For example their spring training look is the navy and yellow ball in glove and everything they're wearing this spring is that. I don't see them wearing the navy and yellow spring jerseys with the navy and metallic gold caps with the wheat under the M logo like the White Sox are doing. Seems like you're a Brewers fan though so if I'm wrong let me know. 

 

This might be an unpopular opinion, but... I actually wouldn't mind seeing the two on the same uniform, BiG used as a sleep patch to replace the M-Silhouette.  The two logos on the White Sox uni are two different type fonts, but BiG is just a logo, so it's a lot more forgiveable to mix and match, akin to numerous times in the past logos from past eras have been used on the sleeves of teams.

 

On 2/22/2017 at 6:42 PM, TVIXX said:

 

I'm very unhappy to see such a unique feature in baseball destroyed.  Any specific reason given for this, besides just fitting in a party area?

 

On 2/23/2017 at 8:16 AM, twi said:

Wow I love those new Rockie tops. 

 

An NHL team needs to get back into a vibrant purple NOW!!

Minnesota Wild... get on it!

 

I was just kidding, but thinking about it, they could probably replace the red with purple, make the yellow a bright white, and make a very good looking night-time version of their current primary.

 

Also...

[Andrew_Gamer_NZP]

1 hour ago, Andrew_Gamer_NZP said:

 

I'm not sure but their stream yesterday showed every uniform in the game.  They also added every uniform in the style guide. So the Nationals new alt, the Royals new alt and the Diamondbacks alts are all in the game plus others this year.

 

Here's a link to the stream.

 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/124243526

 

At 17:50 is when they start talking about and showing the uniforms.

If you just want to look at a specific teams uniform you can do so here.

 

http://www.operationsports.com/forums/mlb-show/903454-every-uni-mlb-17-a.html

[WSU151]

21 minutes ago, Silent Wind of Doom said:

I'm very unhappy to see such a unique feature in baseball destroyed.  Any specific reason given for this, besides just fitting in a party area?

 

Every center fielder in the league hated it and it added no value to the game.  Nothing like running for 60 yards on a long fly ball then have your stride ruined by a hill.  

[RyanMcD29]

(didn't read the above replies about The Show adding all the style guide uniforms, disregard)

[VDizzle12]

51 minutes ago, Andrew_Gamer_NZP said:

If you just want to look at a specific teams uniform you can do so here.

 

http://www.operationsports.com/forums/mlb-show/903454-every-uni-mlb-17-a.html

 

I know it's an unpopular opinion around here, but I LOVE the red Indians hat paired with the navy jersey.

[BJ Sands]

They still have the Cubs' plain throwbacks, something they last wore in 1904. So lazy.

 

No spring training sets, either.

 

Madden, to its credit, added Color Rush pretty quickly last season. The Show could learn from that.

[SilverBullet1929]

18 minutes ago, BJ Sands said:

They still have the Cubs' plain throwbacks, something they last wore in 1904. So lazy.

 

No spring training sets, either.

 

Madden, to its credit, added Color Rush pretty quickly last season. The Show could learn from that.

According to them, spring training jerseys are not in the style guide so they can't be added because they are legally limited to only adding what's in the style guide. With that said, most spring caps are in there because batting practice caps are in the game, and the designs are the same. Additionally, most spring training jerseys are in the game as well because, as we know, most teams spring jerseys are also the same design as their alternate jerseys. By my count, only 5 teams' spring training jersey designs are not in the game, Cardinals, Rays, Yankees, Tigers, and one more that I'm not remembering right now.

[leopard88]

1 hour ago, WSU151 said:

 

Every center fielder in the league hated it and it added no value to the game.  Nothing like running for 60 yards on a long fly ball then have your stride ruined by a hill.  

 

The biggest problem with it was that it was so contrived.  It was trying to replicate something that existed in old stadiums solely out of necessity.*

 

* -- Not that weird angles on outfield walls in modern ballparks are also not contrived to a degree, but at least they don't take an otherwise level playing field and suddenly throw in a hill.

[Silent Wind of Doom]

4 hours ago, VDizzle12 said:

I know it's an unpopular opinion around here, but I LOVE the red Indians hat paired with the navy jersey.

 

Equally unpopular, I believe, but my favorite part of that set was the 70's red with the old navy hat.  Looked beautiful.

 

3 hours ago, leopard88 said:

The biggest problem with it was that it was so contrived.  It was trying to replicate something that existed in old stadiums solely out of necessity.*

 

* -- Not that weird angles on outfield walls in modern ballparks are also not contrived to a degree, but at least they don't take an otherwise level playing field and suddenly throw in a hill.

 

Actually, I'd say it helps keep the park from becoming too cheap.  The corners are pretty cheap, and even though the wall's 21' in left, it's 15-20' in from Pittsburgh's similar height wall.  In fact, the wall in left is only 5' deeper in the corner, and CLOSER in the power alley than Fenway's 37' Green Monster.  Meanwhile, the right field wall is about 11' farther, but is only 7' high.

 

  Image courtesy of the amazing Andrew Clem's Baseball.

 

Fenway's got a short left porch and right corner, so they put in a big wall and a huge right center and triangle in center.  AT&T Park's got a short right corner, so they've got a Death Valley in right center.  Walls all over the league compensate for short distances.  You have to balance your ballpark, or else you end up with Yankee Stadium, where they pull the power aisles in and leave everything else the same, resulting in hundreds of cheap home runs.

 

The hill in center compensated for the cheapness of the sides.  You gotta pull, or your ball's gonna die.  It was a feature, though, that the home team's center fielder could get used to and become a pro at dealing with while giving the visiting center fielder headaches.  Do we know what's replacing it with?  If they bring the center field fence in too much, Houston's production is going to go up... or maybe that's what they're looking for.

 

(Also, on the subject of necessity, the closeness of the left field fence is a total necessity.  Right beyond that wall is historic Union Station, and while an average park may have been able to work around this, the track to support the roof needs to go in a straight line.  Meanwhile, in right field, they couldn't go much farther because the roof already overhangs significantly and the roof can't go any farther back.  Admittedly, they could have popped the wall up some in right, but perhaps they just wanted to give their fans a normal-sized wall in the outfield after spending most of their history with the standard giant outfield fences of a multi-purpose stadium.)

 

[leopard88]

The deep center field before the renovation was fine with me.  It was only the hill that felt gimmicky.

 

At the end of the day, I don't think you will see that many balls turn from flyballs/doubles/triples into home runs even with the renovations.  409 ft. to straightaway center is still a pretty good shot and (in my limited viewing of Astros games) I don't remember that many balls landing or being caught on the hill.  This is from a Washington Post article dated June , 2015 about the announcement of the renovations.

 

Quote

Not that many plays are made on or around Tal’s Hill now. Prior to Sunday’s games, only three of 261 balls hit to center field this season landed close to Tal’s Hill. One of them was a home run by George Springer just on the right edge of the hill. The other two were outs caught on the hill.

 

That seems to corroborate my memory.  Assuming, June 8 is near the 1/3 mark of the season, you would see roughly 9-10 balls a year turn into home runs (even accounting for the Springer shot being a home run with the hill in place).

 

As for the rest of the park, they could have eliminated the seats in left to keep the dimensions a little more reasonable.  Even if they were constrained by Union Station and the tracks for the roof, there was no actual necessity to build seats that cut approximately 20 ft off of the distance to the outside wall.

[BBTV]

Astros park is one of, if not the, most gimmicky parks in history, crammed with so many contrived features that it's almost hard to watch games (on TV at least) there without constantly noticing all the extra crap there.

 

"The hill compensates for the short left field distance" - then build a normal left field!  It's not like they were limited by small city blocks - hell, it's houston - they could have built an acre-sized park and still had extra room.  They intentionally built a wacky park just to have uniquity, but what they got was garbage.  The train?  For a team named "Astros"?  Come on.  A hill - with a flag pole in play?  Absurd.  

 

As mentioned, many other neo-retro parks also have contrived features - mostly weird angles in the outfield (like Citizens Bank Park's weird center field thing for example) but Houston took 50 gallons of gimmicks and crammed them into a 15 gallon sack.

[The_Admiral]

I like ballparks to be distinct from one another, but Minute Maid Park is (was?) nothing but contrivances.

 

The other thing is that they loaded all the gimmicks into left and center field. Right field is just a big dark corner.

[AstroCree]

So we have an umpire still wearing his POSTSEASON uniform in a Spring Training game. 

[dsaline97]

Just now, insert name said:

So we have an umpire still wearing his POSTSEASON uniform in a Spring Training game. 

I mean, if the Cubbies get to flaunt their WS Champs patches the whole damn season, so should the umps, right?

[FiddySicks]

Minute Maid is still the strangest park I've ever been to. It's like they crammed half of a train yard together with half of a large airplane hangar and called it a ballpark. Add to that the glass windows face the sun during sunset and the AC is miserably poor in the upper decks (at least it was in 04 when I was there for the All Star Game) and it's a pretty miserable experience. I think I liked it at the time because it was "new" and the gimmicks didn't bother me because I was a kid and hadn't really seen many parks at that point, but yeah, objectively it's a pretty crappy ballpark. I think every ballpark I've been to since I've liked better. The starkness of right field compared to the strangely overdone westernness of left field is pretty jarring. 

[phutmasterflex]

Didn't get a chance to do a screen shot but yeah, I hate these Stance socks. They look awful. 

Watching the A's game today and the pitcher Jesse Hahn has Stance socks on. Teammate Rajai Davis is wearing traditional stirrups. Not a fan of having socks that aren't uniform.