Jump to content

MLB Changes 2017


TVIXX

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, McCarthy said:

I didn't know the Astros were ever thinking about changing to Railmen. I'm glad they didn't, but I'd like to know more about that.

 

The railroad uniforms would've been great for the Round Rock Express or a handful of other minor league identities, but the absolute wrong identity for the Astros. The intentional blahness of the current uniforms, not even attempting to present a theme is what bothers me so much about them. It's a real missed opportunity, but a generic look is still better than a look that is presenting the brand in a way that is directly antithetical to their namesake. I'm hoping that once navy blue and orange is reestablished as theirs then they can get a little more adventurous with their next set. I'd like them to explore the tequila sunrise pattern more. 

 

 

 

I like the idea of a tequilla sunrise stripe that kinda bisects the numbers, like in the alternate in this concept:

 

7181719171_e0daa26b50_o.png

 

I made a concept in my Paint days that I can't dig up that had something like this, except the rainbow stripe was a bit further down and bisected (if that's the right term) numbers on the front and was a bit smaller (because of the smaller front numbers, obviously). Something along these lines are what the Astros should be shooting for for the extent of their usage with the tequilla sunrise rainbow.

 

Pyc5qRH.gifRDXvxFE.gif

usu-scarf_8549002219_o.png.b2c64cedbb44307eaace2cf7f96dd6b1.png

AKA @LanRovr0 on Twitter

LED Sig Credits to packerfan21396

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 5.6k
  • Created
  • Last Reply
56 minutes ago, Lights Out said:

That would have been a good look if the Astros had actually gone through with changing their name to the Railmen, like they were planning on doing (and had a different cap logo to match).

 

But for a team whose identity was based on space exploration, the railroad/old-timey theme made absolutely no sense. Of course, it's not like their current uniforms fit the theme any better.

Thank you for saying this because I was thinking the same thing. Besides the star, there's nothing in their current set that screams space. With this in mind, one can argue that the Astros hasn't had a good space themed uniform since the late-90s. 

XM4KeeA.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, insert name said:

Thank you for saying this because I was thinking the same thing. Besides the star, there's nothing in their current set that screams space. With this in mind, one can argue that the Astros hasn't had a good space themed uniform since the late-90s. 

Which is why the navy cap is better.. Orange star on navy background is at least semi-realistic..

But they might be better served to pick back up some yellow or gold into their palette, or adjust their orange to be more "star friendly".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, tohasbo said:

Id have to look at my tracker but I believe that is correct

according to the mothership, yes.

 

14 April at Toronto

26 May at Houston

 

Might just be me not liking the O hat, but i wish the all black hat would replace the O hat for road friday games with the black jersey.

 

 

then again, one of my favourite combos is the home batting helmet with the black jerseys and white pants

5qWs8RS.png

Formerly known as DiePerske

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, DustDevil61 said:

 

I like the idea of a tequilla sunrise stripe that kinda bisects the numbers, like in the alternate in this concept:

 

7181719171_e0daa26b50_o.png

 

I made a concept in my Paint days that I can't dig up that had something like this, except the rainbow stripe was a bit further down and bisected (if that's the right term) numbers on the front and was a bit smaller (because of the smaller front numbers, obviously). Something along these lines are what the Astros should be shooting for for the extent of their usage with the tequilla sunrise rainbow.

 

 

I like those, but I wonder how it would look if the star was a solid navy on the orange and stripes, and then a solid orange on the navy.  Would it stand out a little more?

"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." Dennis Miller

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Mitch B said:

 

I like those, but I wonder how it would look if the star was a solid navy on the orange and stripes, and then a solid orange on the navy.  Would it stand out a little more?

 

I prefer a solid navy star (or the longer, shootier 1990s star) on that, and that picture I posted isn't mine (dug it up from a Google search for "Astros Concept"), but my main point in posting that concept is to illustrate how I would use the Astros tequilla sunrise rainbow: it's there, it's loud, but unlike the originals, it's restrained enough to not overpower the rest of the uniform.

Pyc5qRH.gifRDXvxFE.gif

usu-scarf_8549002219_o.png.b2c64cedbb44307eaace2cf7f96dd6b1.png

AKA @LanRovr0 on Twitter

LED Sig Credits to packerfan21396

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do not like any of the new socks with the logos. It's too much down there.

Have one, two, maybe three stripes or none? I'm fine with that.

Add skyscrapers, monuments, team logos, and other designs? No. 

A lot of these are just distracting and unpleasant to look at.

XM4KeeA.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Watching Sunday night baseball right now. Daniel Norris wearing navy socks with three white stripes, third base coach has orange and white stripes, I've seen some orange English D on navy socks and solid navy ones. The Tigers are looking like a cheap beer league squad compared to the Red Sox (the ones going high cuffed) all wearing solid red. There's nothing good, fun or positive about this new douche trend of wearing whatever :censored:ing socks they want... What's next, anyone on the team chooses between the actual team cap or any goddamn fashion one cause they feel like it?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yea I have to say, I was excited about Stance, but they always look either stretched (logos looking funky) or too thin (faded looking, elastic showing through).

I've been substantially disappointed. Some guys seem to have swapped out stirrups for the new socks too ?

BROWNS | BUCKEYES | CAVALIERS | INDIANS |

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When you consider each team's home white and road gray uniforms and disregard the seemingly endless parade of alternates, baseball uniforms are in a Golden Age of design right now. But, that is being ruined by these ridiculous socks.  I hate the pajama pants...a lot...but even that is a lesser evil than the socks.  Who...WHO...thought these were a good idea and looked good?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/9/2017 at 3:55 PM, DustDevil61 said:

 

I like the idea of a tequilla sunrise stripe that kinda bisects the numbers, like in the alternate in this concept:

 

7181719171_e0daa26b50_o.png

 

I made a concept in my Paint days that I can't dig up that had something like this, except the rainbow stripe was a bit further down and bisected (if that's the right term) numbers on the front and was a bit smaller (because of the smaller front numbers, obviously). Something along these lines are what the Astros should be shooting for for the extent of their usage with the tequilla sunrise rainbow.

 

That's a good concept. 

 

I'd match the pants stripes to the sleeve stripes, orange numbers at home, blue on the road. The alternate is excellent. I'm surprised they haven't tried anything like that, but I wouldn't hate it if they did. I know the BP jersey has the rainbow on the side panels, but I think they should go farther with it. 

PvO6ZWJ.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/24/2017 at 0:33 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

First, let me thank @Silent Wind of Doom for that superb long, omnibus-style post.  We need more like that.  (The rest of you are on notice.)

 

Thanks.  I often think my usual "I've been gone for a while, so lemme address everything I've wanted to address and hit the quote button on" posts are annoying to people.

 

On 5/24/2017 at 0:33 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

I have always said "RBIs".  As far as I can recall, the argument for saying "RBI" as a plural was not made until very recently; I remember no such discussion during the time that I watched baseball (1972-1996).  My perception is that the announcers for the local teams (the Yankees' Phil Rizzuto, Bill White, and Frank Messer; the Mets' Bob Murphy, Lindsay Nelson, and Ralph Kiner) all said "RBIs".

I suppose that the analysis is that the abbreviation makes a new word.  Similarly, we refer to multiple holders of a state's or the country's highest legal office as "AGs", even though the full term is pluralised as "Attorneys General".  Another example is "RFP", meaning "request for proposals".  We have no trouble speaking of multiple "RFPs", even though the plural of the full term is "requests for proposals".

 

But I confess that I don't see any direct parallel to the issue of saying "the MLB".  I want to be clear that I wasn't focussing on the argument that the article in "the MLB" is wrong on the grounds that we don't say "the Major League Baseball".  What I was doing, in my cranky but lovable way, was saying that no one spoke the letters out at all in my day.  We'd say "A.L." and "N.L."; but we had no call to say "MLB".  People would say "the baseball commissioner" (not "the MLB commissioner"), "the baseball All-Star Game" (not "the MLB All-Star Game"), and so forth.  If it was necessary to refer to the umbrella organisation under which the two leagues operated, people would say, in full, "Major League Baseball".  And this was true even if the letters "MLB" were written out: if someone were reading a text written as "A meeting took place at MLB offices in New York", that person would invariably say "A meeting took place at Major League Baseball offices in New York". 

 

(A similar practice is found with respect to the abbreviations "PF" and "PA" that we see in football standings.  We say these always as "points for" and "points against; we never read off the letters.  Further proof that we don't read off the sequence of letters is that we don't have any need to pluralise the letter sequences.  In other words: if we said "pee eff" for "PF", then we'd actually use the form "PFs".  But this is not done, because "PF" is prounounced as "points for". The abbreviation "MLB" was one of this type.)

 

The practice of saying "MLB" as "em el bee" instead of as "Major League Baseball" began at about the time when the internet became popular in the mid-1990s.  (It is worth noting the irony that Major League Baseball did not have the domain name "mlb.com" until about 2000, and so was forced to use the domain name "majorleaguebaseball.com" during the period when use of the term "MLB" was becoming common in the language and was supplanting the use of the full term "Major League Baseball".)

 

The practice of adding the article arose somewhat later, as people (chiefly non-baseball fans, I strongly suspect) analogised the now-established term "MLB" to the names of other leagues, and reasoned that "the NBA" and "the NFL" meant that we should say "the MLB".  So I was saying that I can sort of understand people saying "MLB" as "em el bee" even though I don't like it, but that "the MLB" is a total abomination.  It is an abomination because it marks the sayer as someone who is ignorant of baseball history moreso than because the article is not used before the full term "Major League Baseball".

 

Oh, there's no connection.  It's just while we were discussing abbreviations, I just got curious.   I don't know the etymology through the years of the pluralization of RBI.

 

MLB is in a weird position.  Given that it's merger has been more of a common-law marriage than the actual hard merger the NFL and NBA went through, the final straw not being truly broken until the 90's, it's name doesn't fit the mode.  Everything else is a league, but this is two, so you can't say that.  Since the "the" article doesn't fit at all, I've more often than not heard euphemisms used, like "the Majors", "the Major Leagues", "the Show", "the Bigs", or something like that.

 

I think it's more becoming a thing in modern days comes from two things: 1. The other leagues are becoming more prominent, so more people are bigger fans of them and just assume you address them all the same or are less familiar with baseball's unique position.  2. The globalization of the world has led to more awareness of the NPL, KBO, and Caribbean leagues, and they refer to American baseball by a different term trying to better differentiate the professional leagues and to be more sensitive and PC.

 

On 5/24/2017 at 0:33 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

It's definitely both things.  Growing up in the 1970s, we argued over whether Palmer and Catfish could hold Schmidt and Parker, or whether Carew and Brett could hit Seaver and Carlton.  Seeing these matchups was like seeing seeing crossovers between supehero groups. When Dave Winfield doubled off of Dwight Gooden in the 1986 All-Star Game, that was a huge moment whose meaning as a New York battle was greatly increased because it was between players who had never met.  And when John Kruk faced Randy Johnson in the 1993 game, the main part of the fun was that Kruk was seeing a guy whom he had never seen before (and, clearly, never wanted to see again).  The separation of the leagues gave baseball's All-Star Game a lustre that it cannot possibly have today, and that no other sport's ever had.

 

It was a long time ago that I last posted, so I can't remember if I'd said this before or just thought it the first time I read your post.  The difference between the All-Star Games in different sports isn't just chalked up to the ability to see players face off that have never faced off before.  It's a matter of the quality of play.  Football and basketball have so much physical contact in normal play that nobody is going to play the game as well and as intensely as they would if it counted.  Hockey is the same, but while I regularly hear people complain about the other two, I'm less familiar with how well the NHL All-Star Game does because usually nobody's talking about it.

 

It's American League vs. National League.  The best of one vs. the best of the other.  I don't think you need much besides bragging rights to make it interesting.  Seeing all these guys on the same team is just gravy.  And if you want to see matchups that you don't usually see, the current Interleague model means you're playing a team once every 3-4 years.  And if you're interesting in seeing your team face off in a ballpark you don't usually get to see them in, that's 6-8 years.  Dodgers or Giants coming back to New York?  About once every decade, and I'm not sure if they're actually rigidly alternating home field for these series.  That's rare enough for it to still feel like a special treat.

 

On 5/24/2017 at 0:33 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

There is nothing arbitrary in the title of "champion".  In the plan that I laid out (four 4-team divisions per league; no interleague play), each team in a given division plays the same schedule.  The team that does best amongst the four who are playing that schedule has won something significant.

What's more, the division champion's record in relation to the records of teams in another division is completely irrelevant, for the reason that you alluded to when you said:

 

In an earlier response in this thread I mentioned that the regular season should be thought of as the "first round" of the entire championship competition.  The division champs are the winners of that round, and so are the only ones who have earned the right to advance to the subsequent rounds (that which we call "the playoffs").

 

What is arbitrary is what that team is champion of.  A grouping of the closest teams beholden to imagined lines of division.  What's in a division?  I like divisions because they create a culture and relationships between a close-knit group of teams.  What it doesn't do is show you who is the best team.  All teams play each other, so in a hypothetical situation, a weak Western Division can be beaten down on by better teams in the other two divisions.  Meanwhile, Detroit and Tampa Bay are powerhouses in the East.  Without a Wild Card, the better team in Detroit goes home while Chicago wins the West and goes to the playoffs even though they're inferior just because they're slightly to the West of Detroit.  That's completely arbitrary, and so the title of champion is as well.

 

Division championships are fun for bragging rights, but if you want to actually find the best team, if you actually care about who ears the right to advance, then the Wild Card is the best choice.  They're currently hamstrung by being in a one-and-done situation with the winner burning their ace before the ALDS.  If you're not deserving, you'll get bounced.  If you're actually good enough to hang, then you can fight through the adversity.  THAT is earning the right to advance.  If you want to make the divisional race analogous to the ALDS, well that's unfair because it's not an actual head-to-head competition. 

 

On 5/24/2017 at 0:33 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

This is true.  You said "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."  You got that right!  The Royals were Yankee rivals second only to the Red Sox.  (George Brett was the player whom I feared most.)  Every regular-season meeting between the teams carried the tension of the playoff history and the anticipation of more of the same.   

 

But let's realise that these teams were not in the same division. I strongly object to facing a team from one's own division in the playoffs (except in a split-season format such as in 1981, wherein each participant is itself a champion of something).  The 1996 f̶i̶r̶s̶t̶-̶r̶o̶u̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶  ALCS series [thanks to @leopard88 for the correction] against Baltimore felt all kinds of wrong: we had already bested these guys; what were we doing playing them again?  By that point I had already made up my mind to retire after the season due to the coming interleague play; but I knew I was deeply uncomfortable with this format. So, in a way, interleague play did me a favour by pushing me out right then; I am glad that I was no longer a Yankee fan for the absurd spectacle of a playoff series between the Yanks and the Red Sox. 

 

Ahh...  I mean, it seemed evident to me, but I kinda realized in the moment when I was writing my post that I'd based all my ideas of the rivalry on context clues rather than it actually being stated anywhere, and you're someone who actually lived it, so if I was wrong you'd know.  So I decided to play it safe with the wording.

 

On 5/24/2017 at 0:33 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

As big a Yankee fan as I was, and as much as I was emotionally moved by the 1996 World Championship that marked my final moments as a follower of Major League Baseball, I have to say that I value the integrity of the competition more than the idea of my favourite team winning.  I previously mentioned my lack of sadness (and even my feeling of relief) when the Yankees lost to Seattle in the first round in 1995.  On account of my position that a wild card doesn't deserve to be in the playoffs in the first place, I would hope that such a team would never beat a division champion.

 

While I commend you on your research and your act of compliation, I have to say that presenting a list of things that wouldn't have happened if baseball didn't have its current format is pointless, because (as you seem to grasp) it is counterbalanced by the list of things that would have happened if the 1969-1993 format had been retained.  Unfortunately, those events are unknowable, except to the residents of the alternate universe in which sanity prevailed and baseball never brought in the wild card or interleague play.

 

They wouldn't have "nothing".  They'd have the thrill of competing in real pennant races.  I'll mention again that 1985, a year in which the Yankees finished second, is one of my most cherished memories.  Giant fans have three recent World Championships to feel proud of.  But I am sure that many of them still thrill at the 1993 season, in which they didn't win the division but battled the Braves to the final day of the season, or the 1982 race, when they were in a three-way battle with the Braves and Dodgers up until the final weekend.  The wonderful 1993 N.L. West race was bittersweet because it occurred after baseball had already committed to scrapping the format that made such an exciting finish possible, even though it showed conclusively the inappropriateness of the wild card.

 

And the fans of teams that would have won divisions in a 1969-1993 format carried forward would possess the pride in an accomplishment that is much more meaningful than that which is available to division winners in the current system.  It is doubtful that any current-period division winner will be as fondly remembered as the 1983 White Sox or the 1985 Blue Jays are. Today's division winners be remembered merely as one of the teams that made the playoffs and lost (and as no different from wild card teams), rather than true champions in their own right.  I call this a loss for fans everywhere.

 

Oh, like I said, I know there would be other moments, but that was more just a fun exercise I enjoyed in looking back at the fruits reaped from Selig's crazy crusade.

 

My feeling on the subject are not rooted in homerism.  I listed the Yankees' New Dynasty as one of many things that may have not occured.  I also listed the Red Sox in 2004, and if I were going just based on personal gain, we'd still be changing "1914!" to this day.

 

I don't think fans of Red Sox, Rockies, Angels, and Cardinals would trade their runs for the personal satisfaction of saying "I did it the right way."

 

On 5/30/2017 at 1:42 PM, SilverBullet1929 said:

Marlins are doing a fidget spinner promotion too. If fidget spinners bother you, you are either a teacher or way too preoccupied with fads. Understanding it's just a fad and will go away very soon is the way to deal with this this thing. Fads are part of life and to be honest this one seems to be the least annoying one in the longest time because the spinners themselves I must say seem kinda cool and they don't really bother as much as a bottle being flipped every two seconds or other more ridiculous nonsense. 

 

If it hadn't been for a fortuitous losing streak, the Yankees may still have their grounds crew leading the Stadium in the Macarena.

 

On 6/1/2017 at 2:47 PM, McCarthy said:

The best pullover is MLB history is this

 

c18e53b1154b317dbe1b42ffe362e132.jpg

 

I agreed, but couldn't think of too many of the top of my head.

 

Boston comes close.  Maybe Toronto or Detroit?  They all look like they're missing something, though, whereas this one kind of has everything.

 

On 6/3/2017 at 10:26 PM, WavePunter said:

Yeah they're awful.. Bottom 3 in the big 4

 

Diamondbacks, Buccaneers, Jaguars, Browns, Hawks, Clippers

 

On the Red/White/Blue front, I've often said that every team looks different that uses the colors.  Here's how they'd look in my perfect world...

 

Team: Crown/Brim/Shirt/Lettering/Socks

BOS: Navy/Navy/Red/Red/Red | Navy/Navy/Red/Red/Red

CLE: Navy/Red/Red/Red/Red | Navy/Navy/Navy/Red/Navy

MIN: Navy/Navy/Navy/Navy/Navy | Navy/Red/Navy/Navy/Navy

LAA: Navy/Red/Navy/Red/Navy | Navy/Red/Navy/Red/Navy

TEX: Red/Red/Red/White/Red | Blue/Blue/Blue/White/Blue

ATL: Navy/Red/Navy/Red/Navy | Navy/Red/Navy/Red/Navy

WAS: Red/Red/Red/Red/Red | Navy/Red/Navy/Red/Navy

CHC: Blue/Blue/Blue/Logo/Blue | Blue/Blue/Blue/Blue/Blue

 

And, of course, the Angels need a gold Halo.

 

The only two that would have similar combinations would be when the Nationals play at SunTrust, but the white/gray split, wildly different piping, and the chest insignia vs. one of the most recognizeable wordmarks in the sport keep them both looking far from similar.

 

I somehow forgot to quote it, but I did a quick and dirty mockup of what a modernization of the old Mariners script would look like for the person who mentioned that..

 

h82vpoX.png

 

Dangit.  I went through making a schedule for April, figuring out how teams wore their socks to give a good appraisal of how the league was doing.  Then life got crazy and most of May was gone before I got the chance to discuss.  By then, nobody talked about socks, so it seemed like the time had passed.  Now it's coming up again.  XD

spacer.png

spacer.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Silent Wind of Doom said:

What is arbitrary is what that team is champion of.  A grouping of the closest teams beholden to imagined lines of division.  What's in a division?  I like divisions because they create a culture and relationships between a close-knit group of teams.  What it doesn't do is show you who is the best team.  All teams play each other, so in a hypothetical situation, a weak Western Division can be beaten down on by better teams in the other two divisions.  Meanwhile, Detroit and Tampa Bay are powerhouses in the East.  Without a Wild Card, the better team in Detroit goes home while Chicago wins the West and goes to the playoffs even though they're inferior just because they're slightly to the West of Detroit.  That's completely arbitrary, and so the title of champion is as well.

 

But you could say that about every round of playoffs.  One of the eliminated teams is going to be better than some of the surviving teams.  This doesn't provide a reason to let those eliminated teams continue.  Yet this is what the wild card does; it allows continued participation by teams who have already been legitimately elimated (by not coming in first).  The difference in strength between two divisions -- or the difference in strength between two brackets in any playoff system -- is a year-by-year phenomenon that evens out over time. 

 

 

3 hours ago, Silent Wind of Doom said:
On 2017-6-1 at 2:47 PM, McCarthy said:

The best pullover is MLB history is this

 

c18e53b1154b317dbe1b42ffe362e132.jpg

 

I agreed, but couldn't think of too many of the top of my head.

 

Boston comes close.  Maybe Toronto or Detroit?

 

I'd say that there were two good pullover jerseys in history.

 

Joerudi8x10awas.jpg.131cdb1fc2f52ab4e14b9ae7aedbf1ac.jpg  81593191.thumb.jpg.d3f9222d37dfa102597644a293b402a3.jpg

 

The Tigers' road pullovers were  goofy as hell.  In the 1984 World Series, in games played in San Diego, the Tigers managed to look like the cheesy expansion team while the Padres looked sharp in their button-down whites.

 

sdut-padres-world-series-gossage-2014oct20.jpg.4a25367423bac399be5ae7f053607867.jpg 

 

And I think the Red Sox' and Reds' forays into pullovers were nothing short of embarrassing, as was the Cardinals'.  (Though, oddly, the Giants' pullovers were tolerable despite this being a venerable old team.) These traditional teams, like the Yankees and Dodgers, should have stayed with true baseball aesthetics.

 

Toronto's pullovers were just a victim of the trends of the time; I consider those jerseys to be just a way-station until the team found its true look in the late 80s, as several teams began adapting their pullovers to a button-down style (Royals, Angels, Pirates, Mets, Tigers road, Cardinals, Astros), producing pronounced improvements every time.

logo-diamonds-for-CC-no-photo-sig.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 hours ago, WSU151 said:

The Padres' 1st of 3 Way Back Wednesdays is tomorrow - are they going navy/orange 90s unis?  

I believe so.  I saw on Twitter New Era showing off the cap of that vintage (1998 World Series)

 

 

jersey-signature03.pngjersey-signature04.png

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.




×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.