MLB Changes 2017

[Michael Bolton]

Dear god that jersey makes Ichiro look like a terminal cancer patient.

[HighCheese]

Dee Gordon yesterday went with faux high stirrups 

[WavePunter]

9 hours ago, SilverBullet1929 said:

I checked the Braves and Phillies jerseys because they also have thick wordmarks that would need to be lowered with the third button but they use the two button jersey which is the smart thing to do. I actually think this needs to be brought up to the team, I'm gonna look into it since the problem is pretty obvious when you compare them. 

This is the 2-button jersey, but with a custom third button.. Both standard jersey styles have the same number of buttons, they're just spaced differently.. This style is like a combination of the two 

[Bobster]

On 5/22/2017 at 3:56 PM, HighCheese said:

Dee Gordon yesterday went with faux high stirrups 

 

Those look terrible with the pants up that high.

 

[SilverBullet1929]

12 hours ago, WavePunter said:

This is the 2-button jersey, but with a custom third button.. Both standard jersey styles have the same number of buttons, they're just spaced differently.. This style is like a combination of the two 

What? Then why do they have this? So they have the 2 button jersey but just chose to add a third button in that awkward location when they already had it right for the 4 seasons prior? Why? I'm so confused why this was done. I'm dying to know more about this. 

[WavePunter]

5 hours ago, SilverBullet1929 said:

What? Then why do they have this? So they have the 2 button jersey but just chose to add a third button in that awkward location when they already had it right for the 4 seasons prior? Why? I'm so confused why this was done. I'm dying to know more about this. 

i can only speculate, but it seems as though their jersey issues were helped on all the jerseys that said "MIAMI" because it helped hold the wordmark in place, and there was room for the addition button due to the slope of the "A".. the issue with the orange jersey, however, is that is says "MARLINS", and the "R" would cover up that additional button, so they moved the entire wordmark down.. it seems they committed to the additional button style wholesale, rather than just for the "MIAMI" jerseys.. they should've kept the original style for the "MARLINS" jerseys, obviously..

 

here's a photo using Detroit's 2 primary jerseys (evenly spaced buttons on the home - no chest wordmard, 2-buttons tightly spaced on the road - with chest wordmark).. you can see the marlins have essentially combined the 2 styles, thus adding an additional button that normally interferes with chest wordmarks, but due to the sloped side of the "A", they can make it work... though it raises the question, why not just use the standard # of buttons (like Detroit's home jersey)?

[KGeeX5]

50 minutes ago, WavePunter said:

i can only speculate, but it seems as though their jersey issues were helped on all the jerseys that said "MIAMI" because it helped hold the wordmark in place, and there was room for the addition button due to the slope of the "A".. the issue with the orange jersey, however, is that is says "MARLINS", and the "R" would cover up that additional button, so they moved the entire wordmark down.. it seems they committed to the additional button style wholesale, rather than just for the "MIAMI" jerseys.. they should've kept the original style for the "MARLINS" jerseys, obviously..

 

here's a photo using Detroit's 2 primary jerseys (evenly spaced buttons on the home - no chest wordmard, 2-buttons tightly spaced on the road - with chest wordmark).. you can see the marlins have essentially combined the 2 styles, thus adding an additional button that normally interferes with chest wordmarks, but due to the sloped side of the "A", they can make it work... though it raises the question, why not just use the standard # of buttons (like Detroit's home jersey)?

 

Marlins have an extra button for no reason, look at the Mets Jersey, theres a lot of space similarly to the MIAMI script and no need for a 3rd button

 

[WavePunter]

4 minutes ago, KGeeX5 said:

 

Marlins have an extra button for no reason, look at the Mets Jersey, theres a lot of space similarly to the MIAMI script and no need for a 3rd button

 

Agreed.. That's the same style as the previous Marlins jersey, and currently every other jersey with a chest wordmark

[HighCheese]

See, i wonder if its a franchise thing or majestic just tinkering 

 

the old style had a velcro rectangle right in between the I and A

 

[WavePunter]

13 minutes ago, HighCheese said:

See, i wonder if its a franchise thing or majestic just tinkering 

 

the old style had a velcro rectangle right in between the I and A

 

My guess is franchise thing.. They previously used Velcro to accomplish the same goal, so it's a franchise issue already, and with majestic being replaced by UA soon, I doubt they're trying to reinvent the wheel for teams

[The_Admiral]

Are the Miami scripts radially arched now or is that just how the shirt looks on a person? The letters look skewed and rotated, not just skewed.

[SFGiants58]

4 minutes ago, the admiral said:

Are the Miami scripts radially arched now or is that just how the shirt looks on a person? The letters look skewed and rotated, not just skewed.

 

That's how they look on a person, from that angle and with that placket alignment.

 

The whole thing speaks to a bit of sloppiness from both Majestic and the Marlins. 

[Silent Wind of Doom]

 

On 5/18/2017 at 11:45 AM, DiePerske said:

you're right, it is. Doesnt change what the team is describing it is, however.

 

(thought i edited my post to include this, guess i didnt)

 

I think it's "Celebrate Maryland Day", not celebrate "Maryland Day".  The typeface doesn't really make the parsing there clear.

 

On 5/18/2017 at 11:31 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

"Baseball"; "Major League Baseball"; "the Majors".

 

While saying "MLB" instead of "Major League Baseball" is annoying but almost understandable, it's that article in "the MLB" that is a huge clunker.  Someone who says "the MLB" is announcing that he/she doesn't give a fig about history.

 

Huh.  I thought it was an "ATM Machine" thing, where it doesn't work when you spell it out.  I'm curious what your stance on RBIs vs. RBI is, since it's the same matter.

 

On 5/18/2017 at 4:19 PM, Victormrey said:

I was playing MLB Perfect Inning Live and I got a doubt: do the Cardinals still use the Red/White on Navy monogram?

 

Given it's a score bug, I imagine it's more focused on showing off the team colors in a graphic than being the exact representation of a team's cap.

 

On 5/18/2017 at 11:31 PM, Quillz said:

The problem with the wild card, though, is that it really does take away the "prestige" of being a division champion. Teams like the '07 Rockies, the '11 Cardinals, and the '14 Royals demonstrate that you can be pretty unremarkable all season long, then just got hot the last few weeks, and make it all the way to the World Series. It's not that's bad, not at all. Those teams played exceptionally well towards the end, but it's just... I dunno, it's almost like, why even try until the last couple months of the season?

 

That's how baseball works.  It's a streaky sport.  Somewhere in all this the Bucky Dent game came up.  The Yankees didn't perform as well as the Red Sox all year, but got hot at the right point.  Same for the Phold, which happened long before divisional play.  The playoffs reward the hottest team, not the best.

 

On 5/19/2017 at 10:14 AM, Bobster said:

You mean like in the All-Star Game?

Interleague play has certainly removed a lot of the luster from the midsummer classic.

 

Nobody really cares anyway.  But it's that way across sports.  If anything, baseball is the best in terms of quality of play, especially compared to football and basketball.  If anything, it's the height of play.  The novelty shouldn't be in players who never get to see each other facing off.  It should be in players who never play together being on a team.  And it's bragging rights for your league.

 

Carl Hubbel's famous performance was less that he got to strike out players that he didn't normally see ("How cool is it that Hubbel got to face Foxx?!") and more than Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Simmons, and Cronin were on the same team one after the other in the lineup to make that moment happen.

 

On 5/19/2017 at 0:09 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The best possible thing that could happen in this regard would be for baseball to expand to two more cities -- Montreal and San Juan, let's say? -- and to realign to have four four-team divisions in each league.  (And, while we're at it, let's switch Milwaukee and Houston back to their correct leagues already!)

 

Another benefit of this sort of scheme would be that it would simplify travel: a team would need to visit the ballpark of every non-divisional opponent only once a year, for a five-game series.

 

The result would be that the identities of each league would be strengthened, and that the World Series and All-Star Game would have added meaning.

 

I'm rooting for New Orleans and Vegas, although those are good options as well.

 

And the World Series should already have all the meaning in the world because YOUR TEAM IS IN THE WORLD SERIES!!!  But, in truth, I think playoff series are plussed by having met earlier in the season.  It gives it a bit of a rematch feel and you have something in your mind to go back to.

 

On 5/19/2017 at 2:51 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

If you do that, you destroy the point of finishing first, perpetuating the problem that the wild card has created. Letting non-champions into the playoffs undermines the meaning of the regular season.   The beauty of the 1969-1993 setup was that it carried forth the first-place-or-go-home ethic that had been in every baseball league since the sport began.  

 

That actually doesn't bother me at all.  If a team has finished first in its division, then it deserves to be seen as a champion and to make the playoffs.  Some years there will be a wide disparity in wins amongst division winners; some years there won't be.  In 1973 the Mets were the only team above .500 in the N.L. East, with fewer wins than all but two teams in the N.L. West.  There's nothing wrong with that.

 

Also, those trends fluctuate rapidly.  The year before the Mets won the N.L. East with 82 wins, the division's champion had 96 wins, more than the champ of the N.L. West.  Even though the Big Red Machine tended to have more wins than anyone else in subsequent years, the N.L. East champs averaged 90 wins; and before long the Phillies started winning 100.  

Winning the division is the only important thing.  In the very exciting 1985 season which I mentioned above in my comment about not liking today's Yankee fans, the Yankees won 97 games, far more than the 91 which were won by the A.L. West champion Royals.  (This was in fact the second straight year in which the Royals won the A.L. West with a win total that was less than that of the Yankees, as the Royals' 1984 win total was surpassed by five of the seven A.L. East teams.)  And the 1985 Mets won 98 games, which was more wins than the Dodgers had as N.L. West champions.  But we didn't go around saying that the Yankees and the Mets should have been in the playoffs at the expense of the Royals and the Dodgers.

 

It's like 90% of things in this world.  There is no right answer.  There is no perfect setup.

 

Records do not accurately show what is the best team.  High-record teams can feed on crappy teams while two incredible teams in a better division may have a lower record as they face each other and better caliber teams.  And you can't compare the record of a team in one division to a team in the other division because increased inter-divisional play means you don't play the same teams, even if interleague weren't a thing.  If you wanted a pure race, you'd go with the pool method mentioned above.  But even that doesn't give you the best team, because more than most other sports, baseball is built on luck.  It's the bounce of a ball.  One team wins in Cleveland while another doesn't because of a seagull or a swarm of midges.  One team visits Wrigley while the wind blows in and another while it blows out.  Fan interference costs one team a bases-clearing double, keeping the runner on third.  And that doesn't even bring up injuries.  If that seperated the division winner from a team sitting at home, it's unfair.  Sometimes the best team wins the division, sometimes it doesn't.

 

I'm confused by your beliefs as your expressing them.  It sounds like you're defending the idea of a pure divisional race not for better and fairer competitive balance, but just because of the arbitrary title of "champion" sounding better in the playoffs.  If the second team in one division is better than the first in the other, then I agree with the earlier statement that an imaginary line drawn in the sand does not benefit the sport's integrity holds true.

 

The marathon nature of the season is meant to iron out the highs and lows, but it still doesn't work 100%.  People talk about the NBA regular season meaning little, which makes sense because over half the league gets in.  But with baseball, I don't know how you can say that.  A few teams get in, and that season is where teams punch their ticket.  I remember coming down to the end of the season just out of the playoffs and remembering a game in St. Pete where Damon dropped an easy fly and gave up the game.  How things could have been different with one or two games back that had been lost over stupid stuff.

 

In the end, my way of looking at all of this is less from a competitive view and more from a cultural view.  I want divisions because I like being a part of the American League East.  I love seeing the Red Sox multiple times during the year, and have never grown tired of the series.  If anything, more meetings means more people get a chance to visit the ballpark.  I love that Baltimore hates us for invading their home and the Jeffrey Maier game.  I love the history we have with Tampa whose rise knocked us out of the playoffs for the first time in over a decade, and the role they've often played as spoiler over the years.  I love the jeers hurled from the Bleacher Creatures towards Bautista, who played the game back by offering to throw a ball to the fans then turning around and running to the dugout.  And we get to play more of these games where we double our gains in the standings.

 

The recent realignments have also troubled me for the same reason.  Interleague Play was an event with it's own logo.  It was special.  Now, it just happens to happen every once in a while.  I'd prefer even leagues with two weeks of interleague.  The two-Wild Card system, though, is a good step.  People complain that the divisions don't mean anything, but this actually punishes those who don't win.  Even if you win that one game, you've burned your ace for the upcoming series.

 

I went back and checked to see how things would be different with the old system.  On the plus side, Montreal would have made the playoffs in 1996.  On the other side of the coin, the Marlins would be down a championship, their two wins likely the only thing that kept them alive as long as they've been here.  Now they have a level of hope, whereas there might not even be a team there.  Speaking of which, rather than the moment and series that saved baseball in Seattle, they would have hit the buzzsaw that is Cleveland.  Mattingly never would have seen the playoffs, and the team wouldn't even get in until 1998, if Big Stein hadn't blown up the team before then.  Arizona wouldn't have been around to create an iconic world series.  The Angels would still be cursed.  Aaron Boone would be a nobody and there would be no comeback to reverse the curse.  There would be no Rocktober.

 

And it's hard to look at all the moments that have been made possible only under the current system and want to trade them in for something else.  Of course there would be other moments, and historical records wouldn't be exactly the same under different circumstances, but we'd lose so much.  So many fanbases would be left with nothing.  I don't think we've oversaturated the playoffs at this point, so I'm in favor of there being more of it.

 

On 5/19/2017 at 0:58 AM, Jungle Jim said:

I can very much relate.  The Reds swept the Dodgers in the very first NL Division Series in 1995, and I just felt numb.  Just five years earlier, I had been so pumped when they had clinched the 1990 NL West title over the Dodgers, but seeing them take this three-game series sweep to qualify for the NLCS left me feeling nothing at all.  It was then that I knew something was wrong, and the passion I had experienced since being an 8-year-old kid in 1974 was dying or had died already.  The magical run they had in 1999 and the playoff appearances in 2010, 2012, and 2013 did nothing to change it.

 

Things evolve and change over the years.  It's just the fact of the matter.  Except for the most intense rivalries, teams really go in and out of them over the history of the sport.  In the 70's and 80's, the Yankees and Royals faced off a number of times, and while I wasn't around yet, I'm sure the two fanbases hated each other.  Now... it's just another series.  Nobody thought twice about the Angels until they became the only team to have a winning record during Torre's tenure, leading to a lot of fear and hate in the 2000's.

 

Outside of my team, look at what an event Blue Jays vs. Rangers has become, even thought they're not in division.  A few years ago, it was just another series.

 

The Reds are no longer in the same division as the Dodgers, but instead they're now facing the Cardinals a number of times a year.  The two teams exploded into a brawl over a friendly tap on the catcher's gear.

 

On 5/20/2017 at 7:07 PM, joey joe joe jr. shabadoo said:

That's just hideous. I mean if any state needs a new flag it's Maryland with that nonsensical mish mash of ugly. I mean it looks like the back of a deck of cards or something. Just very tacky and weird.

 

What... what state do you live in?

 

On 5/20/2017 at 11:59 PM, WavePunter said:

Interesting that the new button is pretty much perfectly spaced between the first and third buttons.. Making the second button pointless.. Like how a jersey with no chest script should be.. They should just go that route to avoid the triple-button clutter at the top

 

What I don't get is why this is necessary at all.  Looking at the teams this is compared to, they have wordmarks that link up.  All script on the Marlins' jerseys never cross that line.  So, who cares if they're spread out or in fractions of an inch?  You don't end up with a weird gap.  It looks exactly the same!

[SilverBullet1929]

Couldn't the Marlins use both jersey styles? Like use the 2 button one for the orange jersey and the 3 button one for the other three jerseys? Because the problem is only with the orange jersey so I don't get why adding the third button had to be done for that jersey. Don't the Tigers use both jersey versions? 

[raysox]

On 5/21/2017 at 10:05 AM, insert name said:

Off topic but explain your profile pic! 

Heh, that's funny I was just thinking yesterday about how for 35 years DC didn't have a team and how most people became Orioles fans in the time before the Nationals. Not trying to answer for him but I imagine that's it.

 

Also did I mention that the Rays are wearing fauxbacks the first game of the double header vs Oakland June 10th?

[WavePunter]

59 minutes ago, SilverBullet1929 said:

Couldn't the Marlins use both jersey styles? Like use the 2 button one for the orange jersey and the 3 button one for the other three jerseys? Because the problem is only with the orange jersey so I don't get why adding the third button had to be done for that jersey. Don't the Tigers use both jersey versions? 

The 3-button doesn't even need to exist at all.. The 3-button jersey is exactly the same as the evenly-spaced-button jersey, but with the additional button higher up in the 2-button location.. They originally used the 2-button jersey for all of them, then added the 3rd button in the location of the 2nd button on the evenly-spaced jerseys, because the 2nd button wasn't doing its job.. In that case, scrap the 2nd button and use the evenly-spaced jerseys for all "miami" jerseys and only use the 2-button for the "marlins" jersey.. 

And about the tigers - yes and no.. Yes, they use 2 different jersey styles, but No, they don't use the 3-button.. The 3-button is nonsense used only by the marlins.. They use the 2-button and the evenly-spaced buttons, but both tigers jerseys have the same number of buttons

[SilverBullet1929]

20 minutes ago, WavePunter said:

The 3-button doesn't even need to exist at all.. The 3-button jersey is exactly the same as the evenly-spaced-button jersey, but with the additional button higher up in the 2-button location.. They originally used the 2-button jersey for all of them, then added the 3rd button in the location of the 2nd button on the evenly-spaced jerseys, because the 2nd button wasn't doing its job.. In that case, scrap the 2nd button and use the evenly-spaced jerseys for all "miami" jerseys and only use the 2-button for the "marlins" jersey.. 

And about the tigers - yes and no.. Yes, they use 2 different jersey styles, but No, they don't use the 3-button.. The 3-button is nonsense used only by the marlins.. They use the 2-button and the evenly-spaced buttons, but both tigers jerseys have the same number of buttons

On the pic above with the 3 red lines I though the Tigers home had a third button but I was wrong.

 

Do any other teams use a 3 button jersey?

 

I'm so lost because it's not like the Marlins did this from day one... they went four season without that third button, making it more perplexing why it was added in 2016. 

[WavePunter]

14 minutes ago, SilverBullet1929 said:

On the pic above with the 3 red lines I though the Tigers home had a third button but I was wrong.

 

Do any other teams use a 3 button jersey?

 

I'm so lost because it's not like the Marlins did this from day one... they went four season without that third button, making it more perplexing why it was added in 2016. 

they actually used velcro in the same general position as the 3rd button.. it's relatively clear on some photos posted previously.. you can see the rectangle of seams where it was stitched into place.. it's even visible on majestic's website..

idk if they felt like it looked unprofessional, or if the velcro was wearing out or not strong enough, but it seems like this was a narrow-minded solution to a very minor problem.. instead of noticing the fact that their new button is located in the same place as the 2nd button on the other jersey style, and simply switching styles, they've added an unnecessary 3rd button to their current jersey style.. while it might "fix" the incredible small problem of the wordmark flapping around a bit, it creates 2 bigger problems imo.. 1 - creating an unsightly cluster of buttons at the top of the jersey, & 2 - forcing the "MARLINS" wordmark down to the belly, which looks ridiculous... 

but you're correct - they could use the 2 available styles and solve all their problems without looking like trash.

[KGeeX5]

Nothing the current marlins management does amazes me at this point. I hope they sell soon, I'm a Mets fan but living in Miami, I would love for their baseball experience to grow and be what it could be. Seems like Loria and his peeps restrict the team in the weirdest ways keeping them down...

[Wally1912]

The Mets had the odd third button at the top back in the 70s.