MLB unveils bold new spring training jerseys, caps and logos

Baseball’s spring training is a place for experimentation and that’s especially the case with MLB fashion this season. Major League Baseball unveiled on Thursday bold new looks for the spring, including a handful of new cap and jersey designs, reimagined jerseys that feature new fabrics and sublimated lettering/numbering, plus new spring training logos that will unify the caps, jerseys and balls used on the field.

[Elsewhere: Mets minor-league team debuts glow-in-the-dark uniforms and caps]

The new designs are big on branding, tapping into the idea that spring training is a vacation destination. Note the highway-sign-inspired design for the spring training logos that feature the year and states where each team plays. It’s another sign of baseball threads trying to stray from tradition, even if it’s only for the preseason.

Here’s a rundown of the notable changes:

• Above all, fans care about cap and jersey designs, so we’ll start there. A number of new cap designs are being introduced by New Era, including a black Chicago White Sox cap with their “batter up” logo, an alternate Los Angeles Dodgers cap with the D script from the uniforms, an orange Detroit Tigers away cap that is very, very bright, a navy Toronto Blue Jays cap with a maple leaf, a Kansas City Royals cap with a crown, a Texas Rangers cap with an outline of Texas and the Arizona Diamondbacks’ previously announced alternative cap with the snakehead logo.

• On the jersey side, the Tampa Bay Rays will be wearing their sunburst logo on a light blue jersey, which is rather eye-catching. The White Sox have new black jerseys to match their caps and the D-backs are, once again, calling on one of the alternates from their new series of uniform designs.

• Logos aside, all the jerseys will be different in a couple ways this spring. First, Majestic is introducing its new “Flex Base uniform system,” which has been in development for two years. The company got input from players and came up with a new lighter-weight fabric that allows players to move better and reduce the weight of uniforms by 10-20 percent. All 30 teams will wear these types of uniforms.

• Another league-wide change is sublimated lettering and numbers on the back of the jerseys. Look closely and you’ll see a variety of MLB and spring training logos. The league has done similar sublimated looks in the past for All-Star/Home Run Derby jerseys.

• To tie everything together, MLB will use the same highway-sign spring training logos that are on the caps and jerseys on every ball used. You’ll also see it in the on-deck circles at each field.

Contrary to previous design-rollouts, the caps and jerseys aren’t for sale immediately. But they will be eventually. So if they appeal to you, you have some time to save up.

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