FanPost Friday: The Fanatics uniform debacle, the return(!?) of Mariners commercials, #TridentsUp, and more

A round-up of all the most interesting Spring Training news right before real practice baseball starts

Hello and welcome back to FanPost Friday! We’ve got another grab bag of Spring Training odds and ends right before the games start tomorrow. Let’s lead off with perhaps the most exciting item, shall we?

Mariners commercials are SO BACK

A Reddit poster with a keen eye noticed something quite interesting when stopping by the Peoria Sports Complex earlier this week. Looks like Cal Raleigh is starring in his own BIG DUMPER-themed commercial at the very least this season. Surely this means there will be other commercials, but it’s unknown as of yet how many and what other players will be featured. 2019 was the last season the Mariners did the usual full slate of promotional commercials with the silly and wry sense of humor the team had cultivated since the mid-90’s with the ad agency Copacino Fujikado. We’ll just have to wait and see what the end result is for 2024, but I see it as a good faith effort by the team to increase its efforts to promote the team’s best and most exciting players.

The Fanatics/Nike MLB uniform debacle

When Nike took over the MLB uniform license in 2019, things were all good. Nike generally has done a great job with pro sports uniforms in the past, and the transition from Majestic to Nike was honestly not that noticeable to the average observer. That all changed this year when Nike gave over full manufacturing duties to Fanatics, who are very well-known across the internet for extremely bad quality control, and the results have ranged from ugly to just plain hilarious. Let’s take a look at some of highlights from the last two weeks of the slow reveal of just how badly Fanatics has borked this job.

First thing everyone noticed was how bad the name plates, numbers, and heat-pressed logos looked:

The MLB logo being below the collar line now is particularly galling to me. It just looks bad!

Any player with 10+ letter last name is shit outta luck, I guess?

Next came the horror of the seemingly paper-thin baseball pants. Maybe if the designers had ever looked at a single real-life baseball player, perhaps they would have noticed that players tuck their jerseys into their pants? Just a minor detail, I guess.

Come for the dad joke, stay for Cal’s see-through pants:

The pants are also no longer customizable as they were previously.

There is some hope, however, as enough players have apparently complained that the Players’ Union may take action. Seems doubtful that any significant changes can be made in time for the season, but we’ll see.

As an aside, this is a really interesting video comparing the quality of a few NPB jerseys purchased in Japan.

Lastly, this is my own personal bugaboo, but I noticed from the get-go that in the photos of the New Era Spring Training Mariners hats, they were absolutely not the same shade of teal as the ST jerseys they wore last year. Turns out I was right as we’ve started seeing more photos roll out of the players wearing the jerseys and hats together.

The hats are great, just uhhhh, maybe try harder next time to match the colors?

#TridentsUp

There’s a new team slogan in town, folks. RIP #SeaUsRise, you are no longer needed.

What do you think?

Well, that’s about enough grab-bagging for today. Discuss all your uniform, Mariners commercials, and slogan-related thoughts in the comments. There is a real life practice baseball game tomorrow featuring the Seattle Mariners and there’s another one just about every day after that for a month. So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice. Have a great weekend, folks!