Major league baseball players and fans alike are complaining about the new uniforms designed by NIKE and made by Fanatics.

Fanatics founder Michael Rubin says, “This is a little bit of a difficult position,” he said recently at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. “We’re purely doing exactly as we’ve been told, and we’ve been told we’re doing everything exactly right. And we’re getting the shit kicked out of us. So that’s not fun.” This is in some ways fair, in some ways not fair. If somebody comes to us and wants to print something that is a really bad idea, it is expected that we as the experts will say something and not just do it (pun intended.) Nike designed these, supposedly with player input but Fanatics made them and did they think being transparent was ok?

The lettering on the back has almost universally been panned as too small, and I think there can be no argument that the pants are too thin. In short, this is a debacle. Supposedly the new uniforms are some sort of improvement, but in fact from all appearances, it might be more of a cutting corners to make more money, and for once such a thing might be backfiring. If uniforms are of interest to you, check out the website uni-watch. If baseball is your thing, and he has been particularly funny in roasting MLB/NIKE on this issue, check out Craig Calcaterra’s baseball newsletter A Cup of Coffee.