The San Francisco Giants have unveiled a very unnecessary black alternate jersey today. They take a similar approach to what they did with their last black jersey. Except this time it’s not the team name, but their cap logo on the left side. (Oddly, they won’t have an accompanying cap for this jersey.) It’s the idea of their alternate road jersey, but in black.

Along with the black on black logo, they have orange piping and the sleeve stripe. They introduce a new sleeve patch as well. There will be no name on back, much like the home jersey, and the number will be in the same design as the logo in front.

The Giants already have a home white and two road gray jerseys. Also they introduced a new orange jersey last year. That makes four different jerseys already. Now this makes the fifth one.

My first reaction to this was the logo and the front piping. The oranges don’t match. That’s already bad. Secondly, the entire Giants identity is a mess. Every single jersey in their rotation has that front piping except the home whites. Why the inconsistency?

Also, it looks like a mixture of the road jerseys’ front piping along with the sleeve stripe of the home set. Very muddled.

What bothers me the most is that the black jersey is completely unnecessary. They don’t need a black jersey but they decided to do it because merchandise sales would skyrocket. Additionally, they should eliminate one of their road jerseys. Five total is too much.

The sleeve patch is not even that good. They have the baseball patch, the logo patch and now this patch. What was once an overall uniform set that was lean and crisp is now even more cluttered. Don’t get me wrong. I loved it when the Giants wore black during the early 2000s. But that was then. Don’t try to bring it back now and remix it with the already struggling identity. It just doesn’t work.