MLB 2021

[dont care]

6 hours ago, Lights Out said:

 

I'll always have a soft spot for the gradient era, but I really wish the Rays would throw back to these and then forget to switch back to their normal set:

 

 

Disagree the green was so drab and exactly the opposite of what a team from Florida should be wearing.

[SFGiants58]

I gotta revive @Sport's comment on the matter:

 

https://boards.sportslogos.net/topic/109216-mlb-changes-2017/?do=findComment&comment=2787302

 

Quote

Their blue was darker and they leaned too heavily on black. The green and blue Rays had the right zip code, but the wrong address. Their blue was too dark to be used with that dark of a green, and they tried to cram black in there, and they made the inexplicable decision to wear black batting helmets and sometimes black hats despite having very little black anywhere in the actual uniform. Plus the way they striped everything made the blue disappear from any distance and you could no longer see it. Their idea had promise, but they blew the execution. Also vests are yuck.

 

I’m too lazy to concept this, but I’d use forest green in place of navy blue on their current set, new wordmark, new capmark, commit to either a ray of sunshine or a stingray, and outline the numbers with light blue. And I’d put the city name on the road grays. That would give them a unique look in major league baseball, make them one of 2 teams using green, instead of one in a thousand using navy blue, and it'd be a wholly unique color scheme among American professional sports. 

 

I like that proposal. 

[Sec19Row53]

4 hours ago, selgy said:

The gradients might give the effect through an illusion. But it is navy.  

I'm sure you are correct, but I meant the batting helmet. Sorry I wasn't clear. 

[ScubaSteve]

Dear god the Rays went back to their baby blue alts today but kept the throwback cap?!?

[McCall]

17 minutes ago, ScubaSteve said:

Dear god the Rays went back to their baby blue alts today but kept the throwback cap?!?

They've been doing that on Sundays at home for like 3 seasons now.

[OaklandIsBack]

20 hours ago, tp49 said:

FTFY

Well yeah, they never should have added it in the first place, but now with the alt gone it really needs to go. 
 

I would like to see them thicken the collar/cuff trim on the home uniform slightly, then match it on the road grey and both alternates. Make the drop shadow of the black alt chest logo gold and maybe add a front number

[SCalderwood]

 

5 hours ago, dont care said:

Disagree the green was so drab and exactly the opposite of what a team from Florida should be wearing.

 

 

I agree with your sentiment, but to me the navy is more drab, boring, and overused  than the green was.  Compared to using navy, even that "drab" green seemed so much more invigorating, exciting, and fun than what they currently have, IMO.   If their 2008 rebranding was to look more "Florida," I think they failed; they seem to barely use the sunshine yellow anywhere, and while the columbia blue alt is okay, they still wear it with a navy hat and it doesn't do much to really give their look much more life, in my opinion. 

 

Those green uniforms also had wordmarks with character, which is something their current wordmark (singular) seriously lacks.  So even with that dark shade of green, those wordmarks lent some energy to the overall look.

 

As a selfish little aside here, I'm an Orioles fan, and with all the games we play against TOR, NYY, BOS, and TB, it seriously gets boring playing against blue teams so much.  Back when the Rays wore green, I remember actually looking forward to when we would play them so that I'd at least get to see some different colors on the field.

 

[selgy]

55 minutes ago, SCalderwood said:

 

 

 

I agree with your sentiment, but to me the navy is more drab, boring, and overused  than the green was.  Compared to using navy, even that "drab" green seemed so much more invigorating, exciting, and fun than what they currently have, IMO.   If their 2008 rebranding was to look more "Florida," I think they failed; they seem to barely use the sunshine yellow anywhere, and while the columbia blue alt is okay, they still wear it with a navy hat and it doesn't do much to really give their look much more life, in my opinion. 

 

Those green uniforms also had wordmarks with character, which is something their current wordmark (singular) seriously lacks.  So even with that dark shade of green, those wordmarks lent some energy to the overall look.

 

As a selfish little aside here, I'm an Orioles fan, and with all the games we play against TOR, NYY, BOS, and TB, it seriously gets boring playing against blue teams so much.  Back when the Rays wore green, I remember actually looking forward to when we would play them so that I'd at least get to see some different colors on the field.

 

I liked the idea of the green. But as another poster said, the execution failed. 

It was too dark and dreary and the to give it any kind of life recognizable from anything more than 20 feet away or on camera you would have needed a color to pop to counter the forest green. 

To do this you would need a yellow/gold/neon green and ended up with an A's clone. 

I dont think a light blue would have worked enough to stand out to make it work and would have just washed out from a distance. 

The Daytona Tortugas have been referenced many times to justify this look. But the Tortugas use a lighter shade of green, and use a neon green as a third color to make this happen. 



the hat looks good. But the jerseys execution becomes jumbled due to trying to make the colors work

[Eastport76]

I had one thing for Rays:

Bring back and update these and done.

[selgy]

13 minutes ago, Eastport76 said:

I had one thing for Rays:

Bring back and update these and done.

Both uniforms:
Turn the piping and primary colors into the indigo blueish purple that I mentioned earlier (and below). Would be a unique color and combined with the gradient would make the Rays a vibrant Florida team. 

Road:
Fix the horizontal drop from the "A" to "T" in Tampa. It drops a little too much. Shrink the crest mark to maybe 95% (since the the lifting of the T (in Tampa might now bulky it up). 

Home:
Rays only (similar to the one below but white). Fix the horizontal incline and sizing the same way as the roads.  

[_DietDrPepper_]

3 hours ago, selgy said:

I liked the idea of the green. But as another poster said, the execution failed. 

It was too dark and dreary and the to give it any kind of life recognizable from anything more than 20 feet away or on camera you would have needed a color to pop to counter the forest green. 

To do this you would need a yellow/gold/neon green and ended up with an A's clone. 

I dont think a light blue would have worked enough to stand out to make it work and would have just washed out from a distance. 

The Daytona Tortugas have been referenced many times to justify this look. But the Tortugas use a lighter shade of green, and use a neon green as a third color to make this happen. 



the hat looks good. But the jerseys execution becomes jumbled due to trying to make the colors work

I disagree, a light blue and green color scheme would look wonderful for the Rays. That Tortugas uniform is great.

 

The Rays have two very clear options, either they go powder blue and gold and focus on the sun rays, or change to green and blue, or purple and light blue, or something more unique then navy, and focus on the stingrays.

[selgy]

16 minutes ago, _DietDrPepper_ said:

I disagree, a light blue and green color scheme would look wonderful for the Rays. That Tortugas uniform is great.

 

The Rays have two very clear options, either they go powder blue and gold and focus on the sun rays, or change to green and blue, or purple and light blue, or something more unique then navy, and focus on the stingrays.

As long as it doesnt go Forest green it could work. 

Here was the Devil Rays green
https://www.color-hex.com/color/024638

Here was the Daytona Tortugas green
https://www.color-hex.com/color/004e42
 

[Gothamite]

Quote

The Daytona Tortugas have been referenced many times to justify this look. But the Tortugas use a lighter shade of green, and use a neon green as a third color to make this happen. 



the hat looks good. But the jerseys execution becomes jumbled due to trying to make the colors work

I don’t think those jerseys look jumbled at all.  Green outlined by light blue, looks pretty clear.  The photo is a bit small to tell on my screen but it appears they reserve neon green as an accent color for logos, which is the correct call.

[Marlins93]

The Rays uniforms from 2001 until 2007 are probably on my top ten list of worst MLB brand identities of all time. I really loathed that set. The dark green was just so drab and boring; not at all what a team who plays in a domed stadium should have been wearing. It's almost like after year three of the franchise's existence, there was such an impassioned rejection of the dreaded "90s colors" or "90s aesthetic" that they overcompensated far too much in the other direction. There was surely away for them to abandon a gradient, stay true to the spirit of their original color scheme, and avoid something so dull as dark green not really complemented with anything else. Then again, the 00s were a horrific decade for MLB brandings, so they probably weren't even considering adopting bold colors like a lime green.

 

The Rays definitely had the worst inaugural brand identity of all four 90s expansion teams, but it's still the best look they've ever had in their existence. Navy blue is far too played out as a dominant color, but they wear it in a manner that feels less depressing than the dark green did. I was also never a fan of the wordmarks from 01 to 07; the white key lines on most of their jerseys made them total eye sores. Way too noisy.

[Marlins93]

5 hours ago, selgy said:

As long as it doesnt go Forest green it could work. 

Here was the Devil Rays green
https://www.color-hex.com/color/024638

Here was the Daytona Tortugas green
https://www.color-hex.com/color/004e42
 

 

Thanks for posting this. I looked at photos of both uniform sets before looking at the hex colors and it was plainly obvious to me that the Rays wore a darker forest green. The hex verifies it. I think that the Rays 01 to 07 look would have been less disastrous if they went with a lighter shade of green and used a different accent color besides white on the wordmarks. The Tortugas look is much less offensive to me.  I actually kind of like it!

[SFGiants58]

From the vaults!

 

 

I would do a few things differently (lighten the green and redo the tail on the stingray), but I like this general idea. Also, Stingrays is a better idea than “Ray of light.” Granted, I did that too, and I don’t mind it too much:

 

[Frylock]

2 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

From the vaults!

 

 

I would do a few things differently (lighten the green and redo the tail on the stingray), but I like this general idea. Also, Stingrays is a better idea than “Ray of light.”

I just noticed that the front 8 has a few missing pixels on each jersey. But it got me thinking... that twinkle or sunburst that the Rays use could be a fun custom feature on the numbers. Not all the time, but on a true alternate jersey. 

[TheBigFiz21]

I've never seen the O's thrown off their weekend schedule this often in a season. All of them on the road, but it's now three times this year (at Texas, at Washington, at ChiSox) where they had to wear black or orange on a Sunday. Though this week's Friday game was rained out whereas the other games impacted at the Rangers and Nats were out of respect to the home team's jersey choice.

[damnyoutuesday]

I'm actually in the camp with the Rays that they should wear their fauxback uniforms full time

 

 

A few tweaks such as adding a normal white and grey set, and making them a normal button-down jersey, this could be a really fun Florida-inspired set

[gosioux76]

1 hour ago, MNtwins3 said:

I'm actually in the camp with the Rays that they should wear their fauxback uniforms full time

 

 

A few tweaks such as adding a normal white and grey set, and making them a normal button-down jersey, this could be a really fun Florida-inspired set

I actually love the idea of modernizing a fauxback to become the club’s new standard. Start with these, and imagine what they would look like 40 years ahead in the fictional timeline. 

It would be a cool way to build a brand.