EMK19

Well, time to edit the header on this web site, lol. Actually, I’m not even sure how exactly the usage of primary and secondary is differentiated... I’m assuming primary would obviously be exposed more but not sure of much else. At least they’re keeping the team name/Jay head on ball logo around though, for whatever that’s worth.

Like the signing. Drury must be Paniking right now. ... had to be said.

Another minor detail: it seems that our new alternate helmets are entirely dark navy blue; that I like quite a lot. Not sure why they had to differentiate the cap like that... There were also some very minor changes: we have swapped our primary and secondary logos (previously our primary was the classic Jay-in-a-ball with “Toronto Blue Jays” letterings around it, and secondary was just the blue jay logo itself; now its been swapped) and the shade of red has changed to such a miniscule degree that absolutely no one noticed. Good summary of it all here: http://news.sportslogos.net/2020/01/18/blue-jays-unveil-new-powder-blue-uniform-tweak-logos-for-2020/

I’m fine with the Uniform itself as it’s in line with our inaugural ones, except I wish they’d put Toronto instead of Blue Jays. Maybe the letter colours may have been better in reverse? Nonetheless it’s ok, not something I’ll buy but not hard on my eyes either. Not a fan of the powder blue in the cap at all though. Why add the powder blue to the cap? It looks like one of those off colour fashion caps made for kids. Our standard white panel cap or entirely dark navy cap would have been just fine.

“ Former MLB pitcher and 1993 AL Cy Young winner Jack McDowell alleged in a radio appearance Friday morning that the White Sox had an illegal sign-stealing operation at old Comiskey Park in the late 1980s, and that Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa was the instigator of the scheme.” https://www.sportingnews.com/ca/mlb/news/jack-mcdowell-80s-white-sox-tony-la-russa-cheated/ve2uhq2vxta41ej7ny6cd18ar At least he didn’t mention us in this, we absolutely destroyed him throughout ‘93, lol. One thing I’ve always been curious about actually, is how in the 93 World Series DVD , before Joe’s HR, Paul Molitor was talking about Mitch’s pitch selection and knew that Joe was gonna get a slider for that historic swing... I always wondered if he had managed to relay that information to Joe beforehand, or it was just simply just something he noticed from 1st base without relaying it.

#Retire33 Weekend will be April 17-19 at Coors Field, culminating with the number retirement ceremony on Sunday, April 19.

That shizz with MLB licensed games started back in 2004 when EA and 2K sports got into a war of exclusive licenses... 2K mainly bought it as a revenge of losing the exclusive deal for NFL games to EA. It effectively destroyed competition as the MLB 2K series eventually faltered and EA never showed serious interest in reviving the MVP franchise since. We were just lucky that first party game producers like Sony were excluded from the license deal and were able to make decent baseball games, because every other effort was god awful (Triple play, RBI baseball, etc). I tried the the RBI baseball last year for sh*ts and giggles and it was like returning to the days of Nintendo baseball, lol (which may have its place for something simpler like mobile games maybe but has no business being made for consoles). As I'm no longer a console owner and mainly play PC games, I'm glad I can finally play the Show this upcoming season.

I remember we wore the 89-96 home jerseys once circa 2010 or so (I recall it was a Ricky Romero start, some kind of 92/93 commemoration day), sans the matching pants... loved seeing the return of it at the time. But the difference between that and our current jersey is so minor that I doubt we’ll see them again on a regular basis anytime soon. I’m just glad they brought back the white panel cap to bring our current jerseys even more in line to those days. Our current ones is really the perfect balance of our traditional design with some touch of new. I think it was part of Canada 150 celebration to wear them every weekend for the 2018 season and IIRC we eventually scrapped that plan because we went on a Sunday losing streak with them on/players didn’t really like it either. I mean, I get that “Canada’s team” thing is big part of our marketing overall but honestly, red (and the black) needs to stay at most a sub-colour for a team named Blue Jays and things like Canada day jerseys really needs to be limited to being worn once a year. As for Canada day jerseys go I actually didn’t mind the white jersey/red accents version... since the red wasn’t as in your face.

I’m indifferent to powder blues; I accept them as a part of our early history and didn’t mind us wearing them for flashback fridays in the past. As long as they stay a non-primary option I’m alright with it. We do have a habit of wearing the alternates more than our primary jerseys though so I have a feeling we’ll see these new ones out on the field quite often this upcoming season.

Yeah, even in the promotional materials the logo is still our standard bird logo, plus as I’ve stated Nike has already officially announced all new designs for next year, so there will not be any massive re-design, rest assured. This is just a part of MLB and Nike adding a bunch of new alternates to make most of the launch of the new sponsor partnership. TBH I think many out there are just worried and scarred from our past track record of doing some horrid re-designs in the past (T-bird on roids, vest uniforms, Black Jays, etc.).

Found another mock-up by Ian Hunter of Dailyhive I didn’t think about the possibility of just re-introducing the old template as a throwback uniform (as we have done in the recent past, and like how the Raptors have done for this year). I wouldn’t rule it out completely. Looking at the first pic with our current template (with addition of neck stripings), it actually looks a bit awkward IMO so if that is the case then I’d rather they just bring back the old ones instead. But if it’s anything like that middle one, then I may very well riot (NEVER bring back the black again). Leave that colour scheme to a team like Miami.

Oh dear... vibrators... new innuendos coming soon.

He did close for 4-5 years earlier in his career so he should be familiar with relief/pressure duties. Back then he threw with a higher arm angle and bit more velocity (92/93 mph) but eventually lowered his arm angle and started relying on his splitter more as a starter. So if he becomes more of a reliever maybe he could go back to his old style and have better chance at success. His splitter is good though not at Uehara’s level IMO. While he hasn’t impressed me greatly over his NPB career he initially did have high potential, he was once ranked higher than Kenta Maeda but then had elbow/back troubles and has been up and down. But his flexibility makes him a good asset for us and I do believe he’ll be reasonably effective, at least early on.

Thames has a legend-like status in KBO as far as foreign players go. He really did tear up the league that season. Loved watching a former Jay perform well in Korea although he played for a rival team of the team I cheer for (Busan Lotte Giants). Some other foreign players that left a mark include: Felix Jose, Karim Garcia (Pedro: who?), Tyrone Woods, Julio Franco, Jay Davis, Dustin Nippert. Other former Jays that played in KBO include: Esmil Rogers, Tom Quinlan (owner of a '92 World Series ring), Deck McGuire (didn't do well but did get a no-hitter), Luis Jimenez, Dave Bush, Tilson Brito, Zach Stewart.

I randomly found this mock up someone did a year ago for powder blues with our current logo and typeface (http://ultimatebaseballlook.blogspot.com/2018/06/toronto-blue-jays-road-uniform-concept.html): Now I'm sure the jersey will not be a pullover and thus doubt that the bird is moving to the centre either, but it would be interesting to see if they add that neck collar piping back into the jersey retro style (which the Padres' new retro-inspired jerseys have). I also kind of doubt that they'll add "Toronto" instead of "Blue Jays" since the team's marketing concept is about being Canada's team rather than just Toronto's alone (which is probably why Raptors have gone away from using "Toronto" also), but we'll see what happens. It's also probably more likely that the lettering will be in white with blue in-line instead of the above which is the reverse (we've used both style in the past but we had more years with the former than the latter) We will also probably always wear the old white panel caps with them if it is indeed going with the whole retro theme.

We likely won’t have to worry about the extreme case where they go for a total redesign to replace existing jerseys; Nike has already released the preview for all teams for this coming season with home jerseys and as far as I know, all the new designs are in there. (Padres, Rangers, Brewers etc): https://news.nike.com/news/nike-x-major-league-baseball-uniforms-2020-official-images Since Nike is taking over I’m sure this is their way to cash in immediately with the change and divert people from buying old Majestic jerseys coming soon to the clearance racks near you...

I am doubting they will bring back the neck striping or bring the bird to the centre as with the retro ones (although the new Padres jerseys do have neck striping so maybe that's not completely out of the question)... so I guess the key point will be whether the new jersey will have some entirely new design elements to it, or if it will just be the standard template + new colour…

Upvote x100 on home and away jerseys; in particular, I never understood why our gray roads were so neglected by our players during our recent playoff run years (actually for that matter our home whites were almost totally ignored during the playoffs as well; except maybe two games during that run we only wore the blue alternates), it's such a nice jersey. Also agreed on the city name thing; I actually wonder why Raptors have gone away from that completely...

Yeah, I doubt we’ll ever go through another radical redesign again; the 2012 rollback to the old style was perhaps one of the most well received reboot/redesign that I’ve seen in MLB and I’m pretty sure we won’t go away from that again. Maybe at the most they’ll bring the powder blue piping back for the home/alternate jersey like 77-96 jerseys but I doubt we see any more than that as far as standard jerseys go. With that said the powder blue have always been pretty popular with the fans as well and is part of our early history; and since pretty much all the clubs seem to have like 3-4 alternate jerseys anyways it won’t hurt for us to have another one. Hopefully it stays mostly true to our old 77-88 template as the 2012 reboot jerseys were to 89-96 ones. As long as we never pull that Black Jays sh*t ever again I’m cool with adding some alternates.

I recall Barfield got off to a bad start that year (as well as the team in general) and I believe the trade was in part to make room for our young outfielder prospects to play every day, like Rob Ducey, Glenallen Hill, Junior Felix, then Mark Whiten a year later. Moseby was also nearing the end of his run at the time, and Bell was also seen as declining since ‘87 and got into too many clubhouse issues etc, so Gillick probably saw it as the right time to start breaking up the big three and rebuild. Of course none of our OF prospects really worked out in the end, although Felix did leave us with Devo and we got an ok rental of Candiotti for Hill and Whiten. Leiter of course immediately had blister issues a la Aaron Sanchez and only pitched like a game or two each year until 1993 (kind of amazing we were that patient with him)... he then contributed well in 94 and 95 before going off to another team as soon as he had the chance to.

Mooooo-kie! Mooooo-kie! I remember the Mookie fever; his speed and all-out style of play definitely gave us a spark and helped quite a bit in our 1989 pennant run. Too bad he was already near the end of the road and didn’t do much the final two seasons though.

I still wonder if O’Neill can become something... maybe even our potential target someday? Great power potential there, has some speed, can play all OF positions, Canadian... only if he didn’t strike out like 50% of the time... But I guess we don’t really need a second Randal Grichuk anytime soon, do we...

I'm actually wondering if anyone's gonna try to dig back that far and bring that up, at this pace. Then again it didn't exactly turn into on-field success even if true, so likely no one will care.

I think Vlad’s destined for 1B. I realize his arm is an asset and a tool that we’d want to take advantage of, but even if he improves to the point of not being a huge liability I wonder about how well he will age running down hard on turf with his weight (remains to be seen if his slim down project this winter will be effective/long lasting)... I’m thinking possible health issues that may arise will ultimately not be worth it in the long term. Trying him in OF? Probably will be Delgado at LF at the worst and Manny Ramirez-esque at best. Add that to his slow speed and aforementioned turf risks, IMO not worth it. Just going by our own Delgado and EE past track record 1B is likely the safest choice to keep him out in the field.

Seen his twitter videos that seems to have generated some buzz, and there certainly seems to be some quality to his stuff... apparently he only recently added the 4-5 mph that he previously lacked during his time in the white sox system where he seems to have shown some promise already (pitching with control and inducing groundballs), so will definitely be keeping and eye on him.