MLB Changes 2017

[Paul Lucas]

...they could've easily done this. Every Sunday is definitely overkill. And, man, what a missed opportunity with the white panel Canadian caps.

 

[SCalderwood]

If this is being done specifically for Canada 150, and nothing more, nothing less, then I don't really think it's all that bad.  Their flag colors are clearly only red and white and they clearly wanted to go with the ultimate patriotic color scheme, which does not include any blue.  I don't see anything wrong with that.  I think the 150-year mark is a big deal and they are Canada's lone representative in the league.  So go for it, go exclusively crazy with the flag colors once every two weeks.  It's not every year that your country celebrates a special milestone like a 150th birthday.  Sports logo nerds way, way in the future will see this jersey in old photos and have discussions about why the Blue Jays were wearing entirely red-and-white uniforms, which I suppose is partly of the point of doing this.

 

The Blue Jays are helped by the fact that they have a beautiful regular uniform/template to begin with, so even though this red uniform feels incredibly "wrong," it actually does not look horrible.

 

But next year, this thing better be gone and not come back until Canada 200.  If they plan on bringing this thing back every year, then yes, that is a horrible, dumb idea.

[The Golden One]

1 hour ago, SCalderwood said:

If this is being done specifically for Canada 150, and nothing more, nothing less, then I don't really think it's all that bad.  Their flag colors are clearly only red and white and they clearly wanted to go with the ultimate patriotic color scheme, which does not include any blue.  I don't see anything wrong with that.  I think the 150-year mark is a big deal and they are Canada's lone representative in the league.  So go for it, go exclusively crazy with the flag colors once every two weeks.  It's not every year that your country celebrates a special milestone like a 150th birthday.  Sports logo nerds way, way in the future will see this jersey in old photos and have discussions about why the Blue Jays were wearing entirely red-and-white uniforms, which I suppose is partly of the point of doing this.

 

The Blue Jays are helped by the fact that they have a beautiful regular uniform/template to begin with, so even though this red uniform feels incredibly "wrong," it actually does not look horrible.

 

But next year, this thing better be gone and not come back until Canada 200.  If they plan on bringing this thing back every year, then yes, that is a horrible, dumb idea.

 

Chris said it will be around beyond this season.

[BigBubba]

On January 20, 2017 at 0:55 PM, BrianLion said:

We really need the Expos to come back, if for nothing else but to reign in the Jays' unabashed "Canadianism" 

 

I can assure you that putting a team in Québec will not accomplish that.

 

18 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Right.  Also, it's particularly odd for Toronto to position itself as representing all of Canada.  Toronto is the New York of Canada, the city that the rest of the country loves to hate, to call "elitist", and to accuse of not understanding the heartland.

 

No and yes (respectively). While the city itself gets a lot of eye rolls from the rest of the country, the Blue Jays are very popular from sea to sea. They put a lot of effort into growing the game across the country, and host a "Winter Tour" every offseason where some of the players/management/famous alumni go across the country doing autograph sessions, hospital visits, etc. This is evident every time the team visits Seattle.

[FGM13]

12 minutes ago, BigBubba said:

 

I can assure you that putting a team in Québec will not accomplish that.

 

 

No and yes (respectively). While the city itself gets a lot of eye rolls from the rest of the country, the Blue Jays are very popular from sea to sea. They put a lot of effort into growing the game across the country, and host a "Winter Tour" every offseason where some of the players/management/famous alumni go across the country doing autograph sessions, hospital visits, etc. This is evident every time the team visits Seattle.

 

Right, I hate Toronto just as much as any other self-respecting Canadian, but I am a die-hard Blue Jays fan.

[BBTV]

8 hours ago, SilverBullet1929 said:

Looking at it again, and on the mannequins in that pic above... the uniform is beautiful. I don't think too many of us are arguing that it's an ugly uniform.

 

But a white panel on the cap and the Blue Jay being blue would have been a thousand times better and it would have still looked great. It's basically as simple as that.

 

I wanna see a mockup of those edits.

 

I'll argue that it's an ugly uniform. The red-white blue jay head is ridiculous, as is the MAPLE LEAF BECAUSE CANADA cap. 

 

Red and white here are not inherently ugly, but even if I took the team's name and aesthetic history out of the equation, the logo and cap make it ugly. Even in the proverbial vacuum, it blows. 

[Dra---]

On 1/20/2017 at 4:52 PM, bosrs1 said:

 

Yeah I mean I don't disagree that the uniforms are "traditional" but they're pretty lame. They don't have to go brown to have a good uniform, hell they had a good uniform with the blue and gold in 2016 and they dumped it for no apparent reason. That said I like his response on having the Military Sunday, brown on Friday and the 90's style on Wednesday. I mean he's right that they're all popular. What I don't get is why they don't use one of them as the basis for the primary uniforms, particularly the 90's style blue and orange or the brown Friday. It's clear the home/away unis are NOT popular. So why not use one of the popular unis as the basis for the home/away. I mean the 90's style would make a great home with either it's existing wordmark or the current one.

 

First, the problem with blue is that it's overused and cliche, not that it can't look good. Blue in any form doesn't create a unique identity for the Padres, who in fact have a unique identity already with brown.

 

This is especially relevant now that the Chargers have left town because there's no historical link that can be justified between San Diego's football team and baseball team, and because the Padres ought to look distinct from the next door Dodgers, one of our greatest rivals. The Padres should try to avoid linking their main color to LA's main colors.

 

Second, we've also learned that the Padres focus group study included "casual fans," the kind of people who are more likely to find a cliche like blue desirable because it allows them to wear gear in their everyday lives. But this is a horrible way to honor the passion and tradition of Padre fans who experienced and enjoy the history of brown. 

 

We've also learned from this article that MLB does have a say about the uniforms their teams design, contrary too what some have said:

Quote

 

Casey White and Jason Klein, lifelong friends who together founded the company Brandiose in 2000. It’s a local company that specializes in branding and design. It handled roughly 75 percent of the branding for Minor League Baseball last year alone.

“It’s important to have a tradition, but you have to either be willing to completely change that tradition or enhance it,” White said.

In 2007 Brandiose redesigned the Cincinnati Reds logo and uniforms, to critical acclaim and praise. Their new look took the traditional Reds brand and logos from 1890 to 2006 and overhauled the uniforms while enhancing the team’s storied tradition.

I sat down with Klein and White before baseball’s winter meetings to get a little more insight into the process behind re-branding a professional sports team. They made clear that the major leagues and minor leagues do things a little differently.

“In the minors, you’re communicating with team ownership, they make all the decisions, and they directly give you notes.” Klein said. “When you’re working with Major League Baseball, that is exactly who you’re working with. They act as the middle man between the designers and team ownership.”

The MLB errs on the side of classic designs, they said,

 

 

So now we understand why the Padres have such a cliche, boring look.

 

MLB has a preference for "classic" designs while the Padres focus group consisted of community leaders (why are they experts on uniform colors?), season ticket holders (reasonable), and casual fans (awful).

 

Really, only one of these groups, IMO, should be a major part of the decision making: season ticket holders, but they should also include passionate groups like the back to the brown movement who have spent a great amount of time showing interest in the subject.

[2001mark]

16 hours ago, Ray Lankford said:

A new version of this would've worked much better:

 

[2001mark]

7 hours ago, SCalderwood said:

If this is being done specifically for Canada 150, and nothing more, nothing less, then I don't really think it's all that bad

But next year, this thing better be gone and not come back until Canada 200.  If they plan on bringing this thing back every year, then yes, that is a horrible, dumb idea.

It probably isn't lost on them that it's an easy marketing tie in, without having to be officially tied to the Canada 150 campaign.  There's no way they make half the $ killing on these as they think, the same long time fans who flood the city with blue jerseys in the spring & summer were the same lot who didn't dress up in black jerseys.  I think there was a fad with the black caps, yet that faded quickly thank gawd.

[2001mark]

5 hours ago, BigBubba said:

 

I can assure you that putting a team in Québec will not accomplish that.

 

 

No and yes (respectively). While the city itself gets a lot of eye rolls from the rest of the country, the Blue Jays are very popular from sea to sea. They put a lot of effort into growing the game across the country, and host a "Winter Tour" every offseason where some of the players/management/famous alumni go across the country doing autograph sessions, hospital visits, etc. This is evident every time the team visits Seattle.

Yes & agreed.  Canada has adopted the Jays & now the Raptors perhaps only because Toronto is a Canadian city.  The Jays could play in Thunder Bay & the Raptors in Whitehorse, the country would surely still root for them.

[hawk36]

13 hours ago, Paul Lucas said:

 

That is a beautiful cap. What's that from? Should be the national team cap if it isn't already. 

[Dra---]

I like the avant garde approach to the Jays Canadian inspired uniform. It's meant to be formally inventive by altering the blue jay. Some fans might not get this, but over time I suspect people will appreciate the ironic twist for its uniqueness and boldness.

 

I also like that piping on the leg.

[KittSmith_95]

The leg piping is the same piping used on the home and road pants, only it's red. The uniform is way too over the top for its own good and suffers from using too much red. More white and small amounts of blue would help.

[M4One]

6 hours ago, 2001mark said:

It probably isn't lost on them that it's an easy marketing tie in, without having to be officially tied to the Canada 150 campaign.  There's no way they make half the $ killing on these as they think, the same long time fans who flood the city with blue jerseys in the spring & summer were the same lot who didn't dress up in black jerseys.  I think there was a fad with the black caps, yet that faded quickly thank gawd.

 

Winning and making the playoffs the last 2 seasons goes a long way in selling merchandise.  If the Jays were a playoff team during the black jersey era, people would have bought them.  Maybe.  I agree the red jerseys probably won't do as well as the Jays are probably hoping for, but they will still sell as long as the team keeps winning.

 

The logo on the red jersey should be in the regular colours and the cap logo should be also be the regular logo instead of the leaf.

[BBTV]

11 hours ago, Dra--- said:

 

First, the problem with blue is that it's overused and cliche, not that it can't look good. Blue in any form doesn't create a unique identity for the Padres, who in fact have a unique identity already with brown.

 

This is especially relevant now that the Chargers have left town because there's no historical link that can be justified between San Diego's football team and baseball team, and because the Padres ought to look distinct from the next door Dodgers, one of our greatest rivals. The Padres should try to avoid linking their main color to LA's main colors.

 

Second, we've also learned that the Padres focus group study included "casual fans," the kind of people who are more likely to find a cliche like blue desirable because it allows them to wear gear in their everyday lives. But this is a horrible way to honor the passion and tradition of Padre fans who experienced and enjoy the history of brown. 

 

We've also learned from this article that MLB does have a say about the uniforms their teams design, contrary too what some have said:

 

So now we understand why the Padres have such a cliche, boring look.

 

MLB has a preference for "classic" designs while the Padres focus group consisted of community leaders (why are they experts on uniform colors?), season ticket holders (reasonable), and casual fans (awful).

 

Really, only one of these groups, IMO, should be a major part of the decision making: season ticket holders, but they should also include passionate groups like the back to the brown movement who have spent a great amount of time showing interest in the subject.

 

Season ticket holders are already in - a new uniform isn't going to get them to me more in. Not sure why you're dismissing the casual fan - they're the ones that the team needs to reach and turn from casual to serious. 

 

"Passionate groups" are often small-but-vocal organizations. Usually not much gained by giving them anymore than the opportunity to voice their opinion. While every situation is different, they generally don't represent the majority.

[WSU151]

6 hours ago, Dra--- said:

I like the avant garde approach to the Jays Canadian inspired uniform. It's meant to be formally inventive by altering the blue jay. Some fans might not get this, but over time I suspect people will appreciate the ironic twist for its uniqueness and boldness.

 

 

Making everything red and white is neither unique nor bold.  

[mafiaman]

On 1/20/2017 at 8:45 PM, The Golden One said:

From the homepage since it doesn't seem the whole thing is in this thread

 

 

Introducing the Los Angeles Rangers of Toronto...

[Paul Lucas]

8 hours ago, hawk36 said:

That is a beautiful cap. What's that from? Should be the national team cap if it isn't already. 

It's a gorgeous cap that, unfortunately, belongs to no one. I just edited the Blue Jays new cap and gave it the white front panel. Here's the original pic:

 

[Gothamite]

Who said that MLB didn't have a say in the uniforms?  We know they have veto power over team names, and MLB Properties has been intimately involved in the design of club uniforms for a while. 

 

16 hours ago, Dra--- said:

We've also learned from this article that MLB does have a say about the uniforms their teams design, contrary too what some have said:

[BBTV]

If MLB really has a preference for the "classic designs", someone must have been really persuasive to get the Diamondbacks crap OKd.

 

I'm all for contemporary looks, if they look professional and tasteful.  What the Diamondbacks did was neither.