On Friday I wrote about the sleeve patches (or, in some cases, the lack thereof) in certain MLB teams’ Photo Day pics, and what those pics might be telling us about those teams’ plans for for adding sleeve advertisements in the near future. Now that each team has done its Photo Day session, I thought it would be interesting to look at all 30 teams (including the ones we covered on Friday) and see how they handled their sleeve patches during the photo shoots.
It’s worth remembering that Photo Day images don’t necessarily indicate what a team will wear on the field, nor does the state of a team’s sleeve patches in these photos necessarily indicate whether that team is close to striking a deal with a uni advertiser. But it’s still interesting to see how the teams are handling this uni element. Ready? Here we go.
American League East
Baltimore Orioles
Team logo that previously appeared on the left sleeve is now alternating between left and right sleeve, depending on player’s handedness.
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Boston Red Sox
Advertisement alternating between left and right sleeve, depending on player’s handedness.
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New York Yankees
No sleeve patches last year, and that’s still the case this year.
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Tampa Bay Rays
Team logo that previously appeared on the left sleeve is still consistently on the left sleeve.
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Toronto Blue Jays
No sleeve patches last year, and that’s still the case this year.
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American League Central
Chicago White Sox
No sleeve patches last year, and that’s still the case this year. (It’s worth noting that the Sox do wear a sleeve patch on their road greys and black alts, so a photo session with those would have been more informative.)
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Cleveland Guardians
Team logo, which previously appeared on right sleeve, is still consistently on the right sleeve.
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Detroit Tigers
No sleeve patches last year, and that’s still the case this year. Oddly, though, all players were photographed with their right sleeve facing the camera, almost as if they were hiding something on the left sleeve. Hmmm. (In case you’re wondering, that’s not how they posed last year.)
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Kansas City Royals
Team logo, which previously appeared on left sleeve, is still consistently on the left sleeve.
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Minnesota Twins
New uni set, so no point in comparing to last year. But new team logo patch is appearing consistently on the left sleeve.
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American League West
Houston Astros
Advertisement alternating between left and right sleeve, depending on player’s handedness. Team logo, which previously appeared on the left, now appearing on the non-advertised sleeve.
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Los Angeles Angels
Advertisement alternating between left and right sleeve, depending on player’s handedness. Team logo, which previously appeared on the left, now appearing on the non-advertised sleeve.
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Oakland A’s
Team logo, which previously appeared on left sleeve, is still consistently on the left sleeve.
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Seattle Mariners
Team logo, which previously appeared on left sleeve, is still consistently on the left sleeve.
But here’s something odd: The M’s are hosting this season’s All-Star Game, so they’re wearing an ASG patch this year. The ASG patch doesn’t appear in the Photo Day pics, but they are wearing it on their spring training jersey — on alternating sleeves:
So it’s possible that the Mariners simply used old jerseys for Photo Day (and that other teams did the same, for that matter), and that the spring training jerseys are more indicative of their 2023 plans than the Photo Day pics are.
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Texas Rangers
Texas flag, which previously appeared on the left sleeve, is still consistently on the left sleeve.
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National League East
Atlanta
No sleeve patches last year, and that’s still the case this year.
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Miami Marlins
Team logo that previously appeared on the left sleeve appears to have been scrapped.
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New York Mets
Team logo, which previously appeared on the left sleeve, is still consistently on the left sleeve.
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Philadelphia Phillies
Did someone say karaoke??? 🎤 pic.twitter.com/27EoeRnVB2
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) February 23, 2023
TV numbers, which previously appeared on the left sleeve, appear to have been scrapped.
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Washington Nationals
Team logo, which previously appeared on left sleeve, now alternating between left and right sleeve, depending on player’s handedness.
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National League Central
Chicago Cubs
Team logo, which previously appeared on the left sleeve, is still consistently on the left sleeve.
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Cincinnati Reds
Advertisement alternating between left and right sleeve, depending on player’s handedness. Team logo, which previously appeared on the left, now appearing on the non-advertised sleeve, including new uni-inaccurate version on the right sleeve. (More on that here.)
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Milwaukee Brewers
Team logo, which previously appeared on left sleeve, now alternating between left and right sleeve, depending on player’s handedness.
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Pittsburgh Pirates
Team logo, which previously appeared on the left sleeve, is still consistently on the left sleeve.
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St. Louis Cardinals
No sleeve patches last year, and that’s still the case this year.
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National League West
Arizona Diamondbacks
Advertisement alternating between left and right sleeve, depending on player’s handedness. Team logo, which previously appeared on the left, now appearing on the non-advertised sleeve.
In at least one instance, you can see that they removed the team logo patch from the left sleeve of an existing jersey before replacing it with the advertisement, because the team logo left behind some adhesive residue:
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Colorado Rockies
Team logo that previously appeared on the left sleeve appears to have been scrapped.
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Los Angeles Dodgers
Team logo that previously appeared on the left sleeve appears to have been scrapped.
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San Diego Padres
Advertisement alternating between left and right sleeve, depending on player’s handedness. Team logo, which previously appeared on the left, now appearing on the non-advertised sleeve.
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San Francisco Giants
Team logo, which previously appeared on the left sleeve, is still consistently on the left sleeve.
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And there you have it — all 30 clubs. Interesting mix of how the various teams are handling things.
(Special thanks to Twitter-er @weirdsportmerch for catching the D-backs patch residue, and to Twitter-er @ianb78 for the pointing out the Mariners ASG patch situation.)
For these purposes, does “depending on handedness” always mean “pitchers, non throwing sleeve gets the ad; other positions, forward sleeve in the batter’s box gets the ad?” Or do some teams “hide” the ad? I don’t know these players well enough to be like “he’s a righty, he’s a lefty, etc.”
Man, these ads really suck, but I don’t think I could have predicted just how much I extra-hate the non-uniformity of ads and logos swapping for handedness. It’s just…so…non-uniform. Like literally defeating the purpose.
As I noted on Friday, it appears that the Oriole have the team logo facing forward, which seems odd.
The Orioles actually have the patch facing home plate. This presumes that the ad would face the CF camera when watching the TV broadcast. Here are some examples:
Jorge Mateo, #3: Right handed batter, patch on right sleeve
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Gunnar Henderson, #2: Left handed batter, patch on left sleeve
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Bruce Zimmerman, #50: Left handed pitcher, patch on right sleeve
Grayson Rodriguez, #85: Righthanded pitcher, patch on left sleeve
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DL Hall, #24: Left handed pitcher, patch on right sleeve
Mychael Givens, #60: Righthanded pitcher, patch on left sleeve
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Do we know what the ad-clad teams are doing with switch hitters re: handedness and ad placement?
Not yet. My assumption is that they’ll have two jersey options and will wear one based on the opposing team’s starting pitcher. I cannot envision a scenario in which they’d change jerseys midgame based on pitching changes.
Paul, I have never in my life wished that you were wrong more than I do right now. I hope that won’t be the case. I hope they just put the god-forsaken ad on one sleeve and that’s it regardless.
I hate that I even have to say this, but I’m assuming Shohei Ohtani will have to have two different jerseys for days when he pitches and when he hits. Yuck.
Ohtani shouldn’t have different jerseys. He bats left and throws right so his outfield facing arm is always his right arm.
Also, this is all so ridiculous to even be discussing.
Manfred setting out to ruin baseball as fast as he can.
Also, this is all so ridiculous to even be discussing.
That’s the thing, right? Instead of talking about design and aesthetics, we’re talking about corporate theater. It’s gross.
Couldn’t agree more Paul and I work in corporate marketing.
When will we these leagues figure out they’re the product?
“Ohtani shouldn’t have different jerseys. He bats left and throws right so his outfield facing arm is always his right arm.“
Good point, if there even is one on this subject… I was thinking pitchers would have the patch on the arm facing the camera on closeup shots not the centerfield camera. Stupid either way.
I hate the ads, but I honestly think I hate the inconsistency more. Like, I think I’d be mildly less offended if the sleeve patches were just left alone. It just looks so amateurish. Like a rec league team whose manager forgot which side the patch was supposed to go on.
I completely agree with you, Brian! I’m oddly more annoyed by the inconsistent sleeves more than the ads themselves.
The Phillies used blank jerseys, so there’s no reason (yet) to assume that the sleeve numbers have been scrapped.
You can see there’s no name or NOB here:
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Here’s hoping you’re right, BBTV…
Aren’t the Pirates and D-Backs using generic jerseys for these photos too? Normally they would have numbers on the front, but in these photos they don’t.
Putting the ad on the “dominant hand” (which I understand is to make the ads more valuable) just shows how much more important the advertiser is than the team- seems like we are heading down the inevitable path where our jerseys resemble soccer kits, where the sponsor is given more “real estate” than the team name. Terrible
Wouldn’t mind seeing the Giants’ team logo patch go away entirely. The redundancy of seeing GIANTS in the same exact wordmark as the front of the jersey has always hurt my brain. Any ad would be an improvement.
I dislike seeing uniform patches on jerseys of a team that has no tradition of sleeve decoration. Pirates, Giants, Nationals, and Red Sox could stand to lose theirs. About the only “newish” patch I care for is the A’s, because it highlights the elephant mascot and is well-designed.
Yeah, patches for the sake of having a patch just stinks of “we need something there to make it more attractive for retail”. Dodgers and Angels are prime offenders there. As one guy here said, it’s basically just to get all their trademarks on a single piece of cloth.
I heard a rumor that the Red Sox dropped the “hanging socks” patch from the road uniform.
I like sleeve patches on road jerseys where the city name is on the front and something related to the nickname is on the sleeve. Bear logo on the Cubs’ sleeves; hanging socks on the Red Sox’ sleeves; snarling pirate for Pittsburgh. Particularly for dull gray jerseys; it livens them up a lot.
Very good point, I second that!
To leave the contours of the sleeve logo and slap an ad over it is really cheap looking, Arizona. We will have to get used to these ads but it will take a very long time for me. Longer than with the NBA or the NHL.
Bruh Marlins, you’re supposed to put “Marlins” on the home jersey, not remove the only visual of the team name entirely from it. Yeesh. To add insult to injury they still haven’t worked the blue Spring top into the main rotation, and it’s the best of the 2019-present set (except the FLA throwbacks of course)!
Could the Marlins tops get any more boring?
Yes.
Does it bother me that they use Miami on both home and road jerseys?
Yes.
Is the ¨Miami blue¨ the best they´ve got?
Yes.
The two most confusing uniform issues in all of sports to me are
1: Why don’t the Marlins go back to their 90s/00’s set (just put Marlins on all uniforms and change the cap F to an M)?
2. Why don’t the Diamondbacks go back to their early 00s set?
At least the Marlins have improved. Their current set is good, it’s just that their old set was one of the best of all time. In the D-backs case it’s extra frustrating because on top of their previous color scheme being so great, their current set is the worst in MLB by far.
I don’t doubt the correctness of “handedness” as a synonym of “dominance”. But I’m in the habit of calling my left hand my dominant hand, and my right hand as my less-dominant hand. Is this any clearer?
After looking at countless photos the past week of players’ sleeves, I have one question: are sleeve patches kinda dumb? I’m starting to think most uniforms look better without some secondary logo on the sleeve.
Some sleeve patches are really necessary I think, like the Mets, Cubs, Pirates, A’s and the Padres. Their uniforms feel uncomplete without them. In other cases there is no need, like the Yankees, Dodgers, Angels, Giants and Orioles. And some are sorely missed like the old Twins (Minnie and Paul) and now the Marlins and Mariners.
Angels used to have a splendid patch; the problem is it illustrates a previous iteration, the California Angels. Everything since then has been a mess.
The Phillies powder blue retro set…which I don´t like…has that 1980-something patch… which I do like.
Makes it a tad more tolerable. Now if they´d just stop wearing that at home!
Mariners with All Star Game patch in Spring Training is something haven’t seen previous teams do when hosting ASG in July. Is that a first? Seattle has the ASG patch on left/right handeness. In past ST, Mariners wore round patch and AZ patch in 2015-16-17-18-19.
I have a pretty hot take here. Obviously, I’d prefer no advertising, but, I don’t think MLB has done an awful job of it, and I’m not worried about ad-creep. It’s really not that noticeable for most teams, no more so than random specialty or memorial patches teams traditionally wear anyway, and from afar they don’t really look any different. I think in both MLB and NHL (for most teams) the advertisers got ripped off, and I’m fine with that.
The reason I’m not too worried about ad-creep, is looking at Japan. They’ve had adverts forever, and they’ve stayed pretty inconspicuous for most teams. Watching Orix Buffaloes highlights after the Red Sox signed Yoshida and they’ve had patches for years, that are no different in size or placement from MLB’s patches.
I’m fine with the status quo, I don’t like it but it’s not throwing me into a fit of rage either. Moving the patches to the chest (as some NPB teams have), making them larger, or putting ads on the caps though would all be a bridge way too far though.
The awful job is having it on different sleeves.
I was watching games this weekend and my wife walked by and I asked her about the ad patches while they were on the OF camera. She couldn’t see where they were so I told her patch on the sleeve and she said you can’t read it anyway. Just like all these sports the advertiser is getting ripped off for sure.
But ads on uniforms is horrible. These sports leagues forget that we pay to watch the games and don’t pay to sit around to be advertised to.
Yeah I’m a Red Sox fan and I absolutely can not read the “Mass Mutual” on the Red Sox ad, it just looks like a blue rectangle.
I’m also, as one could imagine a Bruins fan and their Rapid7 patch is so inconspicuous I question how long it would’ve taken me to even notice it was there if I hadn’t been told about it beforehand. it’s so tiny you can hardly see it at all. Most of the ads in the NHL are like that but a few are really bad. Mainly if they didn’t match the color to the team colors.
Red Sox and Bruins fan here as well and it was the Sox game and specifically the blue square we were looking at.
My brother had no idea about the Bruins ad patch until I told him. My brother-in-law thought it was some initiative they started because he had no idea what it was.
Japanese baseball is different to start with as the team names are already advertisements. No wonder they will keep the amount of uniform ads relatively low, but also in Japan there are too many ads on uniforms. The big difference is: nobody in Japan seems to care about it. They take it for granted. Should we do likewise? I am not, I think ads on uniforms diminishes them. Japan’s baseball uniforms looked much better before ads were slapped on it.
So basically most teams aren’t “uniform” on their uniforms
The uniformity of uniforms has been dwindling for a while. You can start with the options on pants tailoring, but when stance took over the sock contract the hosiery became incredibly un-uniform. Now looking at these pictures we can see that some of the Reds’ crest logos fit neatly on the left side and some encroach on the head spoon, and the padres (for one) don’t seem to care what color belt their players wear. Add in the fact that the dbacks didn’t bother to use a new uniform to show off the advertising patch (something the advertiser should be livid about) and new era doesn’t care that players complain about sun protection with the mesh back hats and it’s quite obvious that uniforms as simply a way for players to identify themselves as members of a team or as a means of fans to express their affiliation are buried under the desire for brands (including the teams) to cut costs and maximize profit.
Following sleeve patches — be it memorial patches, anniversary patches, what have you — kind of got me into unis in the first place.
This whole thing leaves a really sour taste in my mouth. Especially the removal of one of the most unique features in MLB uniforms, the Phillies’ sleeve numbers.
I’m amazed at how long the Phillies’ design has lasted, given how non-traditional its quirky number font is. If someone told you in 1993 that it would be unchanged three decades later, and would last far longer than their maroon classics, you’d be really surprised, I think.
Between the Nike logo, chest number, Reds logo, and two sleeve patches, that Reds home jersey has the most crowded upper half of a baseball jersey I’ve ever seen. It’s a good thing they have no chance of making the World Series because they’d have nowhere to put the patch.
Reds are so overdue to lose all that extraneous baggage and go with a plain white/red classic ala the ’69 team. The Kroger tag in blue.. welp that’s just horrendous and betrays their traditional look. I see the Orioles figured it out…
The NOBs in that custom font with its multiple layers and shadow really detract from that jersey. The Reds are a longstanding NOB team, so I don’t see them dumping it entirely, but look at how less cluttered the shadowed digits suddenly look on Jackie Robinson Day when the NOBs are gone.
Is there any significance to Arizona wearing the home alts in their photo day?
The (previous) home alt is the only white uniform this season. Blame (or credit) the Nike 4 uniform limit (plus City Connect) link
Kudos (I guess?) to the Padres who kept the swinging friar patch the same orientation on either sleeve, unlike the Cincinnati Krogers.
The flip-flopping of sleeve patches reminds me of the 1968 Detroit Tigers and the number placement on their road sleeves. That was a weird one since it wasn’t based on handedness.
Those advertising patches look so bad. Really clash with the rest of the uniform.
Question for Paul if you know –
With the 4+1 rule, the Cardinals should be using white, cream, gray, and powder blue uniforms this year. It was my understanding that any other spring training jersey color would be scrapped (such as the Mariners powder blues).
If that’s the case, why have the Cardinals been wearing their traditional red spring training jerseys for their games? Will one of the above mentioned uniforms be eliminated?
Team owner has said that the four uniforms you mentioned are staying. Maybe spring training jersey counts as their “+1” since they don’t have City Connect until 2024..? Honestly unsure, and it seems like this is all being applied inconsistently and on the fly.
Thanks for the response. That was my thought as well.
Has MLB and/or Nike addressed the 4+1 rule?
I can only find a couple team execs speaking specifically about it (and then a million people commenting but always referencing the team execs). I can’t find anything from MLB or Nike though.
Thanks
Lee
Same.
I would ask MLB and Nike, but they both stopped talking to me a long time ago.
I assumed ST/practice jerseys didn’t count. Lots of teams make custom St. Patrick’s Day jerseys in ST too; are those going away?
Looking through the Cardinals’ pics… is it normal that only a handful of players (Waino, O’Neill, Goldy, Edman, DeJong, Carlson, & Nado) have numbers on their jersey fronts? Obviously those guys are all locks to make the big league club (unless DeJong continues to put up numbers like he has since mid-May ’19), but there’s plenty of other guys, not to mention the manager and coaches, who will be in St. Louis on March 30, who are all lacking numbers on the front. Which, for what it’s worth, they haven’t done since ’97-98.
I’m guessing that the Cardinals don’t haul every single white jersey from STL to Florida as they wear red for games.
They probably have a few blank jerseys in different sizes for the players to put on for pictures. Meanwhile, the bigger names (Goldschmidt, Arenado, Wainwright, etc.) have their regular jerseys because they will use more pictures of them in uniform for marketing and promos, etc.
Just a quick note that “handedness” doesn’t seem to be the decider for the Padres, as both Joe Musgrove and Fernando Tatis, shown here, are right-handed. And yes, it’s gross that we’re discussing this. Almost as gross as the sticker residue on the D-Back’s sleeves.
The handedbess matters but it varies from batter to pitcher. In the case referenced they’d put the ad on Tatis left arm so it faces the main OF camera while with Musgrove his right arm gets the ad as that’s the one facing the OF camera.
Paul, thanks for your detail in this, and clarifying some of my questions and observations. It’s truly sad that sleeve patches now warrant an entire entry on UW, and not just an small blurb in the annual blog about each team’s changes. The worst part about this whole thing, for me as a Red Sox fan, is that the Yankees will probably take the high road and never put an ad on their pinstripes.
If it makes you feel any better, the Yanks are supposedly exploring the possibilities:
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