Twins break out the vests

[Mingjai]

Alternate Jerseys: Home and road. That gives the team four shirts, which is at least one too many. Plus the solid-blue and red piping doesn't match the team's pinstriped pants in terms of style. Worst of all, the blue of the alt jersey fabric clashes quite visibly with the blue of the caps. Under most lighting conditions, in person and especially on TV, the alt jerseys simply do not match the rest of the uniform. I would expect better of a serious summer youth ball team's uniforms; this flaw is absolutely unforgivable at the big leagues.

I like the alternate jerseys, but I've noticed the color difference between the jerseys and caps. If the Twins switched the color of their caps to the same color that the Indians use, it might match. Is it me, or does New Era have only three colors of blue for their hats: dark navy (Yankees, Red Sox, Braves, Twins), light navy (Indians, Brewers, Padres), and royal blue (Dodgers, Royals, Rangers)?

[M59]

The EASIEST, and in this case, also the BEST solution to the Twins uniform problems is to DROP THE PINSTRIPES from the base home and road jerseys, and pipe them like the alternates. Quick, easy, and substantially better looking!

I hate pinstripes even more than Paul Lukas hates long pants and the color purple!

[BallWonk]

Alternate Jerseys: Home and road. That gives the team four shirts, which is at least one too many. Plus the solid-blue and red piping doesn't match the team's pinstriped pants in terms of style. Worst of all, the blue of the alt jersey fabric clashes quite visibly with the blue of the caps. Under most lighting conditions, in person and especially on TV, the alt jerseys simply do not match the rest of the uniform. I would expect better of a serious summer youth ball team's uniforms; this flaw is absolutely unforgivable at the big leagues.

I like the alternate jerseys, but I've noticed the color difference between the jerseys and caps. If the Twins switched the color of their caps to the same color that the Indians use, it might match. Is it me, or does New Era have only three colors of blue for their hats: dark navy (Yankees, Red Sox, Braves, Twins), light navy (Indians, Brewers, Padres), and royal blue (Dodgers, Royals, Rangers)?

Pantone can clarify the different shades of dark blue each team "officially" uses. But in fact the Twins, Red Sox, Nationals, and so forth all wear exactly the same shade of midnight navy as the Yankees, thanks to New Era. This has not always been the case. Shortly after New Era moved to the modern puffy-foam-backed cap logos in the mid-1990s, new Twins caps were visibly darker than older Twins caps with the flat embroidery. Not a huge difference, but enough you could tell the difference. Used to be more of a true navy; now it's Yankees midnight blue.

The ideal would be for New Era to simply produce caps in each team's official uniform colors rather than making all navy teams either Yankees blue or Brewers blue. That would solve the Twins clashing-alts problem and it would also make Washington's road caps match their road jersey scripts.

I mean, if New Era can produce custom caps in the colors of individual street gangs, surely it could produce caps in each MLB team's official colors, right? It's a shame that MLB seems to have zero quality control over New Era on this score.

However, one advantage to New Era's approach is that it can do larger runs and leverage economies of scale to produce more caps each season for the less popular teams than it would be able to do if each team had slightly different fabric colors. If a Twins cap is just a Yankees cap with a different logo stitched on, Twins fans will have a steadier supply of caps than otherwise. It used to be common for Twins caps to go out of stock late each summer; now, that doesn't seem to happen so much.

In any event, I'm crossing my fingers in hopes that the Devil Rays will choose and insist on a unique shade of blue, just to force New Era to actually build a team's cap to official specs for once.

[Mingjai]

Alternate Jerseys: Home and road. That gives the team four shirts, which is at least one too many. Plus the solid-blue and red piping doesn't match the team's pinstriped pants in terms of style. Worst of all, the blue of the alt jersey fabric clashes quite visibly with the blue of the caps. Under most lighting conditions, in person and especially on TV, the alt jerseys simply do not match the rest of the uniform. I would expect better of a serious summer youth ball team's uniforms; this flaw is absolutely unforgivable at the big leagues.

I like the alternate jerseys, but I've noticed the color difference between the jerseys and caps. If the Twins switched the color of their caps to the same color that the Indians use, it might match. Is it me, or does New Era have only three colors of blue for their hats: dark navy (Yankees, Red Sox, Braves, Twins), light navy (Indians, Brewers, Padres), and royal blue (Dodgers, Royals, Rangers)?

I mean, if New Era can produce custom caps in the colors of individual street gangs, surely it could produce caps in each MLB team's official colors, right? It's a shame that MLB seems to have zero quality control over New Era on this score.

However, one advantage to New Era's approach is that it can do larger runs and leverage economies of scale to produce more caps each season for the less popular teams than it would be able to do if each team had slightly different fabric colors. If a Twins cap is just a Yankees cap with a different logo stitched on, Twins fans will have a steadier supply of caps than otherwise. It used to be common for Twins caps to go out of stock late each summer; now, that doesn't seem to happen so much.

Those larger runs and economies of scale are producing hats of shoddy quality for $35! I guess demand is the other part of the pricing equation, so apparently New Era is facing the inelastic demand curve that looks similar to the ones collectively faced by tobacco companies.