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With any luck, we’ll remember 2024 as the one year of the bad uniforms. Meanwhile, Masyn Winn’s defense is inspirational, a nearly 80-year-old legend is scrutinized and good week/bad week is back. I’m Levi Weaver, here with Ken Rosenthal — welcome to The Windup!
Changes coming to jerseys, pants everyone hates
Our short national nightmare is over: They’re fixing the baseball uniforms.
The good news came from a memo distributed by the MLB Players Association, informing players that changes to the widely panned Nike/Fanatics jerseys will be implemented by the beginning of the 2025 season, at the latest.
Namely, those changes are larger lettering on the jersey tops and bringing back the tailoring options, seam stitch count and higher-quality zipper that were in place in 2023.
If you weren’t following the story earlier this year, here’s a quick catch-up: The issue first arose at the start of spring training, when players arrived at camp to discover that their uniforms were, to put it bluntly, kinda crappy.
The names on the back were too small, the stitching looked cheap, and they were easily defeated by sweat. But that pales in comparison to issues with the pants. There initially weren’t enough of them for all the players, they couldn’t be customized, they didn’t always match the jerseys, they were see-through, and as we later saw in-game action, they ripped.
A lot.
So, who was to blame? Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin said publicly in late February that Fanatics simply followed the design given to them by Nike.
Based on the aforementioned MLBPA memo, that was an accurate statement. Calling the issue “entirely avoidable,” the memo seemed to absolve Fanatics, laying the blame squarely on Nike.
“This has been entirely a Nike issue. At its core, what has happened here is that Nike was innovating something that didn’t need to be innovated. … We cautioned Nike against various changes when they previewed them in 2022, particularly regarding pants. MLB had been, and has been, aware of our concerns as well. Unfortunately, until recently, Nike’s position has essentially boiled down to — ‘nothing to see here, Players will need to adjust.’”
One thing Rubin did get wrong: In March, he said he “thinks Nike’s uniforms will be regarded as an improvement over time.”
Less than two months later, there seems to be a plan to fix them.
Ken’s Notebook: A rookie’s influence on Nolan Arenado
Masyn Winn is impressing the veterans around him. (Rick Scuteri / USA Today)
Nolan Arenado’s record-tying streak of 10 consecutive Gold Gloves ended last season, when he was not even one of three finalists for the National League award at third base. This season, though, Arenado is deriving new motivation from a surprising source — the player next to him in the St. Louis Cardinals’ infield, rookie shortstop Masyn Winn.
“To be honest, playing with him makes me want to step up my fielding,” Arenado told me on Friday. “He goes hard for everything. Not that I don’t, but after last year the way I fielded, I see him getting after it. And I’m like, yeah, man, I need to get back to that.
“He brings energy. Watch him. He’s constantly talking to the pitcher: ‘Let’s go. You got this guy. Nasty pitch!’ I’m like, man, I used to do that when I was a young player with the Rockies. I kind of slowly got away from it. Now I’m like super quiet.
“He’s constant energy. You feed off it. Some teams might think he’s talking trash. But he’s really just talking to the pitcher all the time. It’s pretty cool.”
Backup shortstop Brandon Crawford, who is in his first season with the Cardinals, is also impressed with Winn, but for an entirely different reason. Most young players, Crawford said, don’t look as good in the regular season as they do in spring training. But once the season started, Winn’s at-bats were much better than they were in the spring, when he batted just .227 with a .638 OPS.
Suddenly, Winn was not trying to do too much, hitting the ball the other way, laying off tough pitches or fouling them off with two strikes. And he’s getting better results, too, with a .311 batting average, four doubles, two triples and an .803 OPS in 88 plate appearances. He also is 4-for-5 in stolen-base attempts, and club officials rave about his defense, his arm in particular.
Winn, 22, struggled in 37 games last season, but the Cardinals only promoted him because their season was such a disappointment. It turns out his two-month audition did him good. Winn looks like he’s not only going to be a star, but also the kind of player who makes teammates better.
Examining Ted Williams’ 502-foot “red seat” homer
It’s one of baseball’s most canonical legends: The red seat in right field at Fenway Park allegedly marks where Ted Williams hit a ball 502 feet in 1946. It wasn’t painted until 1984, but in the four decades since, the question has only grown each year — did Williams really hit the ball that far?
MLB.com’s Mike Petriello applied his big baseball brain to this question last Friday, and the result is a brilliant mash-up of history, legend and science.
Why was such an investigation necessary? Recent generations of Red Sox hitters have begun to admit some doubt as to whether such a thing was possible. It’s one thing if, say, Brock Holt (615 games with the Red Sox, 23 home runs) has questions. But when David Ortiz (1,953 games with Red Sox, 483 home runs) says he has doubts …
The doubt makes sense. How could Williams have done something in 1946 that hasn’t been done again in 80 years of strength, technology, and — for one specific era — [ahem] “supplemental” advancements?
I don’t want to spoil the big reveal, but I can tell you that Petriello was exceptionally thorough in his investigation. By the time I finished reading the article, I was pretty convinced that Williams did, in fact, hit the ball that far.
That’s all I’ll give you here. I’ll let you experience the explanation as it was intended.
Monday morning vibe check
Good week
• The Twins have now won seven games in a row, and are above .500 at 14-13. Is this because they played the White Sox and Angels? Wellll, there is another explanation. There’s a lucky sausage. An accidental gift to the team from Kyle Farmer, it’s a summer sausage, if you need specifics. Manager Rocco Baldelli has concerns.
• Two hitters — Mookie Betts and Steven Kwan — did not strike out even once this week. I looked back at their game logs, and the last strikeout for both came on April 15. Kwan has had 53 plate appearances since, and Betts has had taken 52. This is nothing new to Betts, who had a streak of 129 plate appearances in 2016-17. Joe Sewell set the (probably unbreakable) MLB record in 1929, when he went 521 plate appearances without striking out. Sewell had just 114 strikeouts in 8,333 plate appearances in his 14-year career.
• Nick Senzel of the Nationals has five home runs this year, and all five have come in his last five games, starting Sunday, April 21 against Houston. He hit Nos. four and five in a 12-9 win over the Marlins yesterday.
Bad week
• Sorry, but if you get swept by a White Sox team that was 3-22 coming into the series, you lead the “bad week” segment. Tampa Bay hasn’t won a series since April 12-14 against the Giants. 2023’s hot start seems like a distant dream.
• There was a moment when it seemed the Angels might be figuring things out. It was April 17, and they’d just won their second game (against the Rays!) in three days. They’re 1-9 since. As Sam Blum writes, the fundamentals are an issue.
Weird week
• We don’t always do this, but Aaron Judge had a weird one. He went 3-for-23 during the work week, but over the weekend, he heated up, going 5-for-10 with a couple of home runs. He also broke up a double play in a peculiar way — this was not called obstruction (to be fair, he has always done it this way).
Handshakes and High Fives
Zac Kristofak was called up and made his big-league debut with the Angels on Sunday. Sam Blum wrote about Kristofak last September, and it’s worth revisiting now that the 26-year-old right-hander has made the big leagues.
Sticking with the Angels for a moment, Blum sat down for a Q&A with Mike Trout about his mixed results this season; he has shown more power and steals, but a significantly lower batting average.
The Phillies start a series with the Angels in Anaheim today. It’s Brandon Marsh’s first time back since being traded away in August 2022.
Jackson Holliday got off to a rough start in his first shot at the big leagues; he’s been optioned back to Triple A.
For the first time since August, Manny Machado played third base over the weekend. Dennis Lin says now the Padres just need the old Joe Musgrove to show up.
Pete Crow-Armstrong — called up when Cody Bellinger was placed on the IL — got his first big-league hit: a home run.
The Astros swept the Rockies in Mexico City over the weekend. They’re calling up Joey Loperfido on Tuesday. Maybe this will be the week that turns things around.
Two catches you need to see: this one by George Springer, and this behind-the-back beauty by Taijuan Walker:
Taijuan Walker, how on EARTH. pic.twitter.com/lkvqlPM2Bz
— Phillies Nation (@PhilliesNation) April 28, 2024
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(Top photo of a sweaty Jordan Romano: Mark Blinch / Getty Images)
