Major League Baseball has confirmed that the major issues from this season’s uniform fiasco will be addressed, and has provided a bit more information in terms of the timeline for at least one of those issues, although many key questions remain unanswered.
As you may recall, the word that MLB and Nike would fix the major issues “no later than the start of the 2025 season” first came in a memo from the players’ union last Sunday. At the time, MLB and Nike declined to comment, part of a consistent and bizarre “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” approach that both operations have maintained during the unfolding fiasco.
MLB broke its silence, finally, by issuing a statement yesterday. It has a lot of boilerplate platitudes (“Player and Club feedback is extremely important to us,” blah-blah-blah), but there are two substantive takeaways:
- Larger NOB lettering and full pant-customization options will be available “for the 2025 season.” That differs from the union memo, which said those changes would be made “no later than the 2025 season” (emphasis mine). So MLB appears to be saying that those changes will not be made this year.
- However, the statement also says, “Nike is also working on a solution to address the slight color differences between the jerseys and pants of some Clubs’ gray road uniforms, as well the discoloration that can occur due to perspiration in certain instances. Once the solution is finalized, adjusted gray uniforms will go on field as soon as the second half of this season.” Of course, “as soon as” is a conditional phrase, not a guarantee, but at least it gives us some hope that this particular issue could be fixed at some point this season.
MLB’s statement still leaves several major questions unaddressed, however. For example, will the mismatched greys be solved simply by going back to the old jersey fabric, or will they keep the new fabric and be more stringent about color control? Will next season’s fixes mean a return to the old template (including the wider headspoon piping and the higher positioning of the MLB logo), or will they simply incorporate the larger NOB lettering into the new template?
MLB and Nike may not yet know the answers to those questions themselves. But it would be nice if they could at least acknowledge them.
Why can’t the pants and jerseys be made from the same fabric? Like they probably used to do?
Until this season I’ve always just assumed that the pants and jerseys were made of the same fabric, but now it’s got me wondering.
As I have reported several times, thru we’re not the same fabric. But the old jersey fabric matched the pants better than the new jersey fabric.
Why so confrontational
That cat is out of the bag; they’ve gone to that new performance fabric for their jerseys and they’re not going back to regular polyester.
Plus that material is so flimsy you can’t make pants out of it, so for better or worse we’re stuck with the current setup of different fabrics on the jerseys and pants.
Nike apparently needed more time to be able to do a better job color-matching the fabrics, and it seems like they didn’t give themselves enough time to do it.
Unforgivable for a multi-billion dollar company, but since it’s Nike, also unsurprising.
Actually, the previous pants and jerseys were *not* made from the same fabric (but they color-matched better).
Which NFL team(s) was it that Nike fould not match the right shade of green for many years or something?
Eagles “midnight” green
The Jets green was all wrong until they switched sets. Reebok had a shiny dark emerald green while Nikes version of the 98 jersey was almost military drab.
Looking forward to a few seasons of Uni Watchers noticing X player on Y team was wearing a jersey in the 2024 road-grey jersey material
Hopefully that won’t happen, since apparently Nike is going to fix the NOB size — which should immediately be noticeable to the eq. mgr. or clubhouse guys hanging the unis in the lockers. There will probably be a few that slip through the cracks.
If “Player and Club feedback is extremely important to us,” they wouldn’t be in this shit hole of a situation. Manfreded it yet again.
Speculation on my part, but I’ll bet the first few players who complained were taken to the woodshed for defying Nike. But ultimately the steady drip became a torrent and the Player’s Union made its position clear.
Bring back traditional sleeve piping and proper headspoons before the extra performance speed causes a fatal injury!
This entire controversy reminds me of the “New Coke” scandal: Pull the old product, release a lesser version of your product, then let the consumer feel as if they won by walking back some of your changes; Thereafter, reintroduce the old product with the cost saving measures you wanted all along.
Exactly what I was thinking.
I think they basically intentionally cheapened the on-field jersey, called it “authentic” so that they could charge $300 for “authentic” jerseys while paying the generic manufacturing price. And then claim the lighter jersey is for “better performance”. It was a billion dollar scam.
I think they safe bet is that the changes highlighted here are all we’re going to see. As the union memo stated “the Vapor Premier,” template, or whatever it is called is “here to stay.” As I’ve previously predicted I think we see a lot of changes to the pants since there’s no retail issues there, and minimal changes to the jerseys. Tweaking the greys and the name lettering size, that’s about it. I think the head spoon, fabric, MLB batter man logo etc all remain as they are now.
It’s nice the Padres have no road greys. They have light sand, or whatever it’s called.
Nike pushes what they think will sell, they would prefer teams wear alternate jerseys in the road as they sell better. They are a fashion company not strictly an athletic clothing company.
This is I think a very accurate observation: fashion comes first, performance later over at Swoosh HQ.