Nike? Fanatics? Nope, Turns Out It’s MLB’s Fault! (Maybe)

For nearly two weeks now, I’ve been telling people that the problems with the new MLB uniforms are Nike’s fault, not Fanatics’s fault. But according to ESPN Sunday Night Baseball analyst Eduardo Pérez, some of the biggest changes we’ve seen were actually done at Major League Baseball’s initiative (although Pérez seems more okay with them than most of us are).

Here’s the deal: Pérez was a guest on Friday’s episode of the Baseball Tonight with Buster Olney podcast. The talk eventually turned to the new uniforms (that segment begins at the 14:52 mark), and Pérez — without any prompting from Olney — brought up the issue of the MLB logo being lowered on the back of the jersey. Here’s what he said:

The MLB logo, the bat[ter]man, that’s usually up by the collar, that was brought down. And because it was brought down the names have been brought down, and because the names have been brought down, the brand also has been brought down, of the team. And that’s a decision that really wasn’t made by Nike or the players or the teams. It was made by Major League Baseball. And that’s the part that we have to understand. Look, you want to get that brand out there, you want to be able to showcase it, you want it a little bit bigger, these are the sacrifices that are having, that have to be made.

This is a very muddled quote that seems to raise more questions than it answers. For example:

• Pérez notes that the player names were moved downward. But is he saying that’s why the NOB lettering had to be made smaller, because there’s less space for it? He seems to be implying that, but he doesn’t actually say it.
• Pérez then says that “because the names have been brought down, the brand also has been brought down, of the team.” What does that even mean? There are no team logos or branding on the back of MLB jerseys. The only thing beneath the player names are the numbers. Did he mean to say “numbers” instead of “brand”? It’s a bizarre quote.
• Pérez then wraps things up by saying, “Look, you want to get that brand out there, you want to be able to showcase it, you want it a little bit bigger, these are the sacrifices that are having, that have to be made.” Is he talking about the team’s brand or MLB’s brand? Is he implying that the MLB logo is not just lower but also bigger? When he talks about necessary “sacrifices,” is he referring to the smaller NOB lettering? (I was so perplexed by the line about making the brand bigger that I asked on Twitter if someone could compare the MLB logo sizes on old vs. new authentic jerseys. The answer: The logo has not gotten bigger.)

The one unambiguous thing about Pérez’s quote is that he says lowering the logo was MLB’s idea. But why would they do that? Just to “showcase” it, as Pérez suggests? This article speculates that they may have done it because some players’ long hair was obscuring the logo. But SB Nation writer Robert Behrens has an interesting counter-conjecture:

Alternate theory: because the size of the area above the collar seam is smaller on the new template, they were gonna have to reduce the size the MLB logo to keep it there. So rather than make the logo smaller, MLB asked to keep it the same size and move it below the seam.

If…

— Robert Behrens (@rcb05) February 25, 2024

So what Behrens is saying there — and I think it sounds plausible — is that, yes, technically speaking, MLB had the logo moved down. But they only did that because of Nike’s narrower placket and collar. If they had left the logo in the same spot, the logo would have to be a bit smaller to fit into the smaller headspoon space, which MLB didn’t want to do. This would explain Pérez’s line about the “brand” being “a little bit bigger” — in other words, bigger than the reduced size that would have been necessary if they’d left it in the original spot.

Of course, this still wouldn’t explain the other ambiguities in Pérez’s quote. I really wish Olney had asked him to clarify things. I DM’d Pérez last night and asked him to explain his thoughts in greater detail; no response yet.

If Behrens is interpreting Pérez’s statement correctly, that would mean Nike and MLB are both at fault for the rear-jersey problems — Nike for creating a template that didn’t accommodate MLB’s longstanding logo patch, and MLB for ruining the back of the jersey just because they were unwilling to let their logo be a few millimeters smaller. Of course, that still wouldn’t still tell us why the collar/placket/headspoon were made narrower to begin with.

But we’re still still stuck in the realm of conjecture here, because — as I spelled out last week in my open letter to Nike — we’re largely operating in an information vacuum. And that’s because Nike and MLB have told us almost nothing about why these changes were made (aside from giving us vague statements about “improving performance”).

So I say to both Nike and MLB: Please tell us the full story behind these changes already, including who made which decisions, and why. Sheesh.

(My thanks to Phil for making me aware of Pérez’s appearance on Olney’s podcast.)