Notes, quotes and comment

Because three colors aren't enough.

Word leaked out almost a week ago that the Twins were going to change the home uniform -- most notably, dropping the pinstripes, adding gold as a drop shadow to the letters and numbers and reversing the name from red with blue outline to blue with red outline.

The new look was officially released Monday, and I'm no more impressed with the result than I expected to be, which was not much at all.

My take on this stuff is: Simple is better. The uniforms I think look best -- the Tigers, the Royals, the Yankees, the White Sox  -- are two-color schemes, white and something. The more colors you're working with, the busier the design becomes.

Which might be why they dropped the pinstripes. to clean up the design some. I prefer the pinstripes to the gold.

The gold is supposed to mimic the Kasota stone of Target Field, and I suppose that, as one who has now lived in Mankato more than half my life (and spent most of my career here) I should like that. But the stone is good enough. They don't have to put it on the uniform too.

Ah well. There are worse changes coming. Someday MLB is going to start putting ads on uniforms. I expect they'll let the NBA go first with that, but it's coming. That will be a monstrosity. This is not.

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Francisco Liriano, of whom I wrote in Monday's post, declined the qualifying offer Monday. So did the other 11 free agents who received QOs.

Another ex-Twin, Michael Cuddyer, not only declined his one-year $15.3 million QO from the Colorado Rockies, he signed a two-year deal with the New York Mets for $21 million.

Nothing with Cuddyer this offseason has made any sense to me. I was surprised the Rox made the qualifying offer to begin with. I figured Cuddy was pretty much a lock to accept it. I could not imagine the Mets giving up the 15th pick in June's draft to sign him. Wrong once, twice, thrice.

So discount this next prediction as much as you wish: The Mets will sign at least one more of these QO free agents, onthe basis that it's easier to swallow giving up a second-round pick for Cuddyer.

The Rockies clearly read the market better than I, or most outsider observers did. They're getting a compensation pick. We'll see if the Mets have the better read on Cuddyer's next two years.

Financially, it's an ... interesting decision by Cuddyer. Subtract the Rockies' qualifying offer from his Mets deal, and he's effectively playing in 2016 for $5.7 million. This leads me to surmise that he's leaving some money on the table, that he'd make more if he went year-to-year.

But I suppose that if he has another 49-game season in 2015 he might get Jason-Kubel'd and find that he didn't have a 2016 season.

Plus there's this: The Mets believe they're on the cusp of contention. Cuddyer has, with this contract added in, made roughly $100 million in his career. He can afford to chase a ring.

Notes from the weekend

Adam Dunn has the kind of build that
made this White Sox uniform notorious in
the late 1970s and early '80s.

Probably no major league team has changed its uniform look more often than the Chicago White Sox. I make that statement even though they've stuck with their current black-and-white motif for more than two decades and figure to stick with it for another two. It's a good one.

The current uni has lasted long enough to feed nostalgia for some of the older unis, and the Sox have taken to breaking out throwbacks for their home Sunday games. This year's Sunday unis are the vertical pullovers most associated with the big bellies of such South Side stalwarts as Greg Luzinski and LaMar Hoyt.

Also some trimmer athletes — Harold Baines, for one — but the primary drawback to the vertical look was the way it emphasized the extra poundage carried by several of the players.

It was a unique look — nothing like then or since — and, quite frankly, I prefer it to the dark blue "alternative" jerseys the Twins have turned into their de facto standard jerseys.

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Miguel Sano, the Twins mega-prospect playing for the Fort Myers Miracle in the high-A Florida State League, had a bit of an adventure Sunday. First he had to dodge a fastball thrown at his noggin; then he homered (same at-bat); then he got ejected for taunting the Palm Beach dugout.

The details as the story reached Minnesota came from people connected to the Miracle, and the view from the opposing side may be different. My take on it is that it's not only the players in high-A who have things to work on before they deserve to reach the majors, it's the umpires too — and this incident was probably mishandled. (Both managers were eventually ejected from the game, Doug Mientkiewicz during the Sano brohaha and Johnny Rodriguez in the ninth for arguing balls and strikes).

I will also note that Palm Beach is a St. Louis Cardinals affiliate, and extrapolate from that, perhaps unfairly, that Tony LaRussa's belligerent bully mindset has permeated the Cardinals farm system.

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When the schedule came out I had my doubts about the wisdom of having the Miami Marlins come here in April and the Twins go to Miami in late June. Sure enough, the forecast for today is crappy. And, of course, it's the Marlins' only trip to Minnesota.

Uniform followup

* The Uniwatch blog sounds off on the new/old Twins uniforms. He applauds the new road look, loves the 1961 model, hates the other alternates and gives a mild thumbs up to the standard home whites.

* According to Marc Okkonen's book "Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century," the Twins abandoned the blue lettering/red outline look after the 1971 season. So it's been 38 years.

* There is, apparently, a great deal of sentiment for going to the 1961 look as the standard home uniform.

Dave St. Peter, team president, quoted in the Star Tribune:

I suspect there will be a heavy dose of lobbying to make that our permanent home uniform. ... We don't think our uniforms are broken. We have to remember we won not one but two world championships wearing that home white uniform. We feel as though that remains one of the classiest uniforms in Major League Baseball.

What he DOESN't say is: We spent a lot of money putting that tweaked stylized script Twins over the scoreboard in the new park. If you think we're trashing that after one season, you're nuts.

What's new is what's old

The Twins on Monday unveiled their new uniforms.

They didn't see fit to model the standard home whites, probably because the only change is a very slight tweaking of the serifs on the "Twins" stylized script across the front of the jersey.

The Saturday throwback uniform, worn in the photo by Denard Span, is a replica of the 1961 uni -- most notable, the blue script "Twins" outlined in red, a reverse color pattern than they've used for a couple of decades.

The biggest change is the road gray, modeled here by Scott Baker. The pinstripes are gone. The block letter "Minnesota" is replaced with script, blue outlined in red. The stylized script "m" cap has been relegated to alternate use; the new road cap is a two-tone TC.

My reactions:

• The change to the standard whites is so minor I wouldn't have noticed it without it being called to my attention, and I work with fonts.
• The throwback is fine as a one-year wonder.
• Everybody's standard home unis are more attractive than their standard road unis. This is no exception. Ditching the pinstripes on the road is for the best, but this design certainly doesn't stand out. (A co-worker complained that it looks like Cleveland's road uniform, and he's got a point.)
• I dislike most two-tone caps, and especially blue crowns with red brims.
• I have mixed emotions about the fading away of the "m" cap. Like most Twins fans, I prefer the TC logo. But the "m" was the cap for both the '87 and '91 World Series teams, and I will always think of it fondly as a result.