Missed Deliveries Are The Latest Error For MLB, Nike, And Fanatics

There are hundreds of MLB players and millions of fans. It’s hard to get them all to come to a consensus on any subject, but Nike and Fanatics appear to have accomplished that rare feat. Everyone seems to agree—the new MLB uniforms are an unmitigated disaster.

Adding fuel to the fire, Fanatics is now failing to meet deadlines to deliver uniforms. Both the Texas Rangers and Milwaukee Brewers had to postpone debuting their City Connect uniforms because the company failed to deliver them on time.

The missed shipments add to a long list of embarrasing errors for Fanatics, Nike, and MLB, who entered into a 10-year partnership beginning in 2020 in which Nike would design the uniforms and Fanatics would produce them. The deal is reportedly worth more than $1 billion for Nike.

This year’s uniforms are made from a new material called Vapor Premier, which Nike claims, “was engineered to improve mobility, moisture management and fit, while keeping sustainability in mind and bringing inspiration and innovation to athletes.”

The “moisture management” has been the opposite of the improvement the company purported. Sweat stains discoloring road grays across MLB and have been conspicuously unignorable, especially since there were no profuse sweat stains on the old jerseys before this season. The stains give the appearance of mismatched grays between the top and bottom halves of the uniforms.

The problem was so bad during the opening week of games that Nike responded publicly. The company told The Athletic, “We have isolated the issue and are exploring a solution to minimize it.” The simplest “solution to minimize it,” would be to revert back to the old material, but there has been no mention publicly of the company considering that option.

Not many players were sweating yet at the beginning of spring training, but the new uniforms were abound with errors before anyone even put them on. They reduced the size of the players’ names on the back of the jerseys, making them harder to read. They also made numerous mistakes in aligning letters and numbers.

Fanatics customer support even responded to a social media post by Michael Chavis of the Seattle Mariners, mistakenly thinking he was a dissatisfied customer who purchased the jersey. They took down their response shortly thereafter.

Additionally, the see-through pants were the talk of the spring. This may or may not have been a new issue, as there were cases of translucency in last year’s pants, but the issue was more noticeable this spring. Besides, just because the issue isn’t new, doesn’t make the pants any less see-through.

The failed deliveries of Milwaukee’s and Texas’ City Connects pile onto the list of inexcusable gaffes made by Nike and Fanatics with MLB’s complicity. Any one of these issues could be overlooked as the news cycle turns, but players, teams, and fans are no longer willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

There’s no hiding how terrible they’ve made the players look this year, and every time a new mistake arises, all three entities come under increased scrutiny.