Orioles' new City Connect patch is making the original look worse than ever

The Baltimore Orioles T. Rowe Price sponsered jersey patch is one of the worst in all of baseball. Its colors clash with the Orioles' longtime color scheme, and it's much bigger than most sponsored patches around the league.

A few weeks ago, the Orioles revealed their new City Connect uniforms, and something that stood out was how little the T. Rowe Price patch was. The normally multishade of blue patch that stands out as an eyesore on every pitch and every swing during every Orioles game has now been replaced by a much more subtle green, white, and orange patch.

This begs the question: Why can't the patch always be made to match the uniform?

The Orioles latest City Connect jersey patch highlights a major problem

This isn't an out-of-left-field request. Several sponsored patches have changed the color of their default logos to better match the teams' jerseys, out of respect for the aesthetics that have been a part of baseball for decades.

Motorola sponsors the San Diego Padres and the Chicago Cubs; the Padres patch is brown, and the Cubs version is blue. Motorola still gets to slap their logo on an MLB jersey, but they at least have the respect not to ruin the jersey.

The first version of the Mets New York Presbyterian was a large white and red patch, which looked terrible on the team's blue and orange jersey. The two parties came together, and now the Mets have a much less intrusive orange and blue patch on their jersey that matches their team colors.

The details of T. Rowe Price's agreement with the Orioles are mostly unknown. Before the latest version of the jersey patch came out, nobody outside of the Orioles organization could say for sure that the Orioles were allowed to ask T. Rowe Price to adjust the patch. For all anyone knew, the shape and color of the patch were critical to this agreement, and no other version was even thinkable.

Now that an adjusted, less hideous version of the patch has been created, the floodgates for criticism are open. Why has this patch not been made to match all the Orioles jerseys? If the Orioles can stand their ground on the City Connect and make it less distracting, they can stand their ground on their normal uniforms and demand that T. Rowe Price make an adjustment.

T. Rowe Price does not own the Orioles; they are an official partner of the Orioles. Partners are supposed to work together. The Orioles should have the equity in this partnership to say, "This ugly blue patch doesn't work for us. Come back with an orange, white, and black patch, and we'll put it on the jersey, no problem." The fact that they haven't done this is a bad look.

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