MLB 2019 Changes

[THRILLHO]

8 hours ago, Jungle Jim said:

 

Case in point:  Two years ago the Reds' Scooter Gennett became the first player in five years and the 17th player in major league history to hit four home runs in a single game. It will forever be immortalized as...

 

 

Every time I see that moment revisited on TV it bothers me. 

[bosrs1]

Well at least the nightmare is over. 

[Marlins93]

The magic marker route would have looked even worse than the monochromatic jerseys did. I also was not fond of the suggested idea of Majestic making individually customized jerseys for all of the players. Flashy cleats and sleeves are fine, but the pants and jerseys themselves need to have some sense of regularity/uniformity to avoid become a total visual nightmare. Having players on the field with radically differently colored ensembles would cause way more confusion than illegible NOBs/numbers do. I believe that's why MLB even has rules to this effect--specifying that uniforms must be identical for all players, although I suppose they relaxed that a bit by allowing the pitcher to wear a black cap while the position players wore white ones.

 

Based on my observation, a fairly large number of players don't get into the PW spirit. Of course there's many who do run wild with it too. If this event is going to continue into the future (I'd prefer they axe it, but that won't happen), MLB would be better off doing something similar to the NBA's "city jerseys" or soliciting input from players about design concepts.

 

Also, Players Weekend, like most branding/design decisions, is not entirely about merchandise sales, either. They are certainly intended to be drivers for fan enthusiasm/interest, social media traffic, or generally just to get people talking about baseball. I'm certain that next season they will become up with designs that fans will actually buy, especially with Nike coming on board.

[rmc523]

10 hours ago, MattMill said:

Very few went bright color. I guess they didn't study or gauge what their players actually use and wear. A good amount had their own team color accessories. More went with custom cleats. But overall, nothing too crazy. It's not like college basketball or the NBA where the floodgates have opened for 'expression'. Most MLB players just want to play ball and look respectable doing it. 

 

I want to say 80% went with straight white cleats (even those on the black uniform team wore white) or black cleats. It was relatively colorless. 

 

I noticed the cards pitchers went regular cap yesterday 

 

A solid under shirt, a solid cap, and maybe a wordmark that is outlined in all red, and you have a decent set. They could've went white vs black and opened it up a touch and no one would have even cared. But these were some soul-less sets. 

 

I wonder how they'd have looked if they went all white and all black, but instead of the silver outlines, they use the team color outlines.  So Cardinals like that pictures would have a red outlined wordmark with a white middle for home teams/white jerseys, and black middle for away teams/black jerseys.  The Marlins would use blue.  The Yankees navy blue, the Astros orange, etc.

[Maroon]

20 minutes ago, rmc523 said:

 

I wonder how they'd have looked if they went all white and all black, but instead of the silver outlines, they use the team color outlines.  So Cardinals like that pictures would have a red outlined wordmark with a white middle for home teams/white jerseys, and black middle for away teams/black jerseys.  The Marlins would use blue.  The Yankees navy blue, the Astros orange, etc.

 

That would have been a much more attractive uniform.

[RichO]

I really enjoyed the degree to which the players seemed to genuinely hate these uniforms

[rmc523]

23 hours ago, RichO said:

I really enjoyed the degree to which the players seemed to genuinely hate these uniforms

 

To me, they seemed the complete opposite of what they went for the last few years, where they were going for something more fun, colorful, and out of the norm.  This they went completely lifeless and bland.

[CaliforniaGlowin]

There are only two teams in MLB that have black and orange and the Dodgers get them in back-to-back series.

[THRILLHO]

The Reds screwed up their font size today for their 95 throwback 

 

[Jungle Jim]

If only there was some way that the franchise could perform research on these types of things.  It would have been handy if someone had brought some photos or old yearbooks over from Riverfront before they blew it up.  Or maybe get a subscription to the Internets and try to find some pictures of the actual jerseys on there.

 

[THRILLHO]

4 hours ago, Jungle Jim said:

If only there was some way that the franchise could perform research on these types of things. 

 

It is so strange because all the communications the Reds put out about the throwbacks indicated that they had such a great attention to detail for each uniform.  They claimed to take painstaking measures to recreate uniforms while making them playable in the modern era. An oversight like this is shocking. I guess all that time spent on details was for the oldest sets 

[Sport]

The Reds haven't worn those uniforms since I was 11 years old and even despite being the uniform of my youth, the one that my favorite player won an MVP in, when they last won a playoff series, when Primetime was on the team, I never had much affection towards them. Even as a kid I always thought the white pinstriped hats were silly looking and wanted them to wear the red hats full-time, which they did on the road and when they were atbat in home games. 

 

I watched that game yesterday just to see if my feelings towards those uniforms was clouded by any weird feelings of useful nostalgia and nope - those are better left in the past. I don't like vests*, I don't like how the undershirts had a big c on the sleeve, I don't like the inverted Creds, I'm not in love with pinstripes for the Reds like some fans seem to be, and the hats are awful. Of the throwbacks they've done in the Throwbackapalooza these can go with the pre-1940 uniforms, the 56 uniforms, and the 61 uniforms as uniforms I wouldn't want to return to full time. http://news.sportslogos.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/cincinnati-reds-2019-throwback-uniform-schedule-590x1010.jpg

 

 

*I am really looking forward to the 1999 game on September 22 in spite of this. Those uniforms were worn by my favorite Reds team and unlike the 93-98 unis I do have deep feelings of sentimentality associated with them. 

 

 

 

EDIT: was really glad to see the players who went sleeveless in some of the other throwback vests decide to wear sleeves this time around. Nobody in 1995 was going Full Kluzewski so it would've been period anachronistic to not wear sleeves this game. 

[THRILLHO]

@McCarthy

These uniforms were a strange byproduct of chance and circumstance.  As you surely remember the Reds were the last team to move on from the pullover sans-a-belt uniform when they debuted the vests and pinstripes in 1993.  Up to that point it had become standard practice for a team going back to the button-down/belt uniform to just take the same uniform design and apply it to the belt and buttons uniform.  The Reds probably would have done that had it not been for two turn back the clock promotion in successive seasons prior to 1993.  Funny enough neither of these promotions happened in Cincinnati (which actually isn’t shocking since this wouldn’t have been the sort of thing that Marge Schott would want to spend money on.

 

The first was June 16, 1991 in Philadelphia.  The Reds wore a 1957 grey vest with an empty wishbone C.

 

http://news.sportslogos.net/2012/08/14/phillies-reds-to-throwback-on-aug-22/

 

The second was on August 30, 1992.  The Reds wore another vested uniform from 1962 in a game at Shea stadium.  Rob Dibble famously got knocked around this game and ripped his uniform apart leaving the field. 

 

https://huntauctions.com/live/imageviewer.cfm?auction_num=55&lot_num=395&lot_qual=&closed

 

These uniforms were very popular with fans.  Why?  Who knows.  Maybe it was because the Reds were the only belt-less team.  Maybe fans wanted to look like other teams.  Throwback uniforms weren’t a big thing yet so the nostalgia probably got a bigger reaction than expected.  I seem to remember at this time a bunch of old style merchandise becoming available.  There was a guy I knew that got his hands on a white pinstriped yankees cap which I thought looked extremely cool (or as cool as one could look wearing a yankees hat).  A lot of the 1992 baseball cards even featured Reds players wearing the uniforms from the 1991 game against the Phillies. 

So when the Reds went back to their belts in 1993 it was on the heels of all this stuff going on.  I really feel that those forces played a big part in the design choice for the 1993-1998 set.  I really liked them at the time.  When they added black in 1999 I was really upset.  I remain upset about black being part of their color scheme.   But looking at these things yesterday I have to agree with you.  They aren’t good uniforms.  I think this season has really driven home the point that the Reds aren’t a pinstripe team. 

[Sport]

3 hours ago, THRILLHO said:

@McCarthy

These uniforms were a strange byproduct of chance and circumstance.  As you surely remember the Reds were the last team to move on from the pullover sans-a-belt uniform when they debuted the vests and pinstripes in 1993.  Up to that point it had become standard practice for a team going back to the button-down/belt uniform to just take the same uniform design and apply it to the belt and buttons uniform.  The Reds probably would have done that had it not been for two turn back the clock promotion in successive seasons prior to 1993.  Funny enough neither of these promotions happened in Cincinnati (which actually isn’t shocking since this wouldn’t have been the sort of thing that Marge Schott would want to spend money on.

 

The first was June 16, 1991 in Philadelphia.  The Reds wore a 1957 grey vest with an empty wishbone C.

 

http://news.sportslogos.net/2012/08/14/phillies-reds-to-throwback-on-aug-22/

 

The second was on August 30, 1992.  The Reds wore another vested uniform from 1962 in a game at Shea stadium.  Rob Dibble famously got knocked around this game and ripped his uniform apart leaving the field. 

 

https://huntauctions.com/live/imageviewer.cfm?auction_num=55&lot_num=395&lot_qual=&closed

 

These uniforms were very popular with fans.  Why?  Who knows.  Maybe it was because the Reds were the only belt-less team.  Maybe fans wanted to look like other teams.  Throwback uniforms weren’t a big thing yet so the nostalgia probably got a bigger reaction than expected.  I seem to remember at this time a bunch of old style merchandise becoming available.  There was a guy I knew that got his hands on a white pinstriped yankees cap which I thought looked extremely cool (or as cool as one could look wearing a yankees hat).  A lot of the 1992 baseball cards even featured Reds players wearing the uniforms from the 1991 game against the Phillies. 

So when the Reds went back to their belts in 1993 it was on the heels of all this stuff going on.  I really feel that those forces played a big part in the design choice for the 1993-1998 set.  I really liked them at the time.  When they added black in 1999 I was really upset.  I remain upset about black being part of their color scheme.   But looking at these things yesterday I have to agree with you.  They aren’t good uniforms.  I think this season has really driven home the point that the Reds aren’t a pinstripe team. 

 

Really good points and I think you're right. I remember those throwback games and my dad saying "they should wear these uniforms all the time." I think by 1992 their pullovers were really out of style and they needed to do something. It's possible they considered a buttoned version of the 88 uniforms, but the other thing that was happening at the time is teams were going back to the uniforms they wore before their pullovers. The Red Sox, Cardinals, Braves, Cubs, generally fall into this area. The Twins, Orioles, and White Sox all switched to updated versions of old uniforms around that time as well. I believe the Reds wanted to follow that path and looked to their own past for some inspiration, which is where they pulled the vests from. The throwback games gave them that option. I think if they hadn't played those games they wouldn't have considered a sleeveless jersey. 

 

1993 also coincided with the Marlins coming into the league with a vest so it's possible that MLB properties was pushing vests at the time. 

There probably was a concerted push to use one of the uniforms from the pre-BRM era as the inspiration for a new belted and buttoned uniform and those two throwback games may have helped ease that along. It's possible that in 1992/1993 they wanted to use a uniform inspired by the past, but decided the 69 uniforms were deemed too boring to revert back to so going the Cardinals/Red Sox route was off the table. The one they ended up going with most closely resembled the early 60's uniforms. They went even further towards those 62 uniforms in 99 with black in place of navy blue and choosing, wisely, to avoid using a white pinstriped hat. 

 

With regards to pinstripes and the Reds - they wore the 67 throwbacks and the 69 throwbacks a couple weeks apart. The 67 throwbacks made them look like the Phillies, the 69 throwbacks they looked unmistakably like the Reds. And not at all scientific, my gauge was that social media much preferred the 69 stark white look. That's my stance. The Reds shouldn't wear pinstripes. 

[WSU151]

We should get our first look at 2019 Postseason gear in about 90 mins when the Dodgers win the division. 

[Delicate Genius]

Greg Garcia and his taupe belt.

 

[M4One]

5 hours ago, WSU151 said:

We should get our first look at 2019 Postseason gear in about 90 mins when the Dodgers win the division. 

 

 

 

[soxkrazy]

Postseason on-fields are $41.99 on Fanatics. Yikes! Price increase and quality decrease. Also, will we see Nike jerseys debut during the postseason? Usually that's when changes make their first appearances.

[TheOatsMustFlow]

That seems weird that Nike would take over during the postseason instead at the beginning of the next year. Is there any other info on that?

 

Also, the New Era quality decrease with the substantial increase in price over the last few years is incredibly ridiculous. I like to buy hats but only with membership/discounts. Hard to justify buying any more these days, feels like robbery. 

[SilverBullet1929]

10 hours ago, M4One said:

 

 

I would love to see a young Scottish boy wearing this shirt.