Riley Greene's exploding pants vs Pirates throw more cold water on Rob Manfred's claims

Snapping a three-game losing streak on Tuesday required a come-from-behind effort by the Tigers. A close game, like most of the Tigers' others, it featured some life coming into Spencer Torkelson, Kerry Carpenter, Jake Rogers, and Riley Greene's bats after slow starts on the year to come away with a 5-3 victory over the Pirates in Pittsburgh.

The Tigers had a little extra fun at the expense of Greene, however. Greene was the second Detroit base runner to score on a Gio Urshela single, and as he was hustling home to beat a throw, he slid feet first into home. It was a good slide, but there was a wrinkle (or, rather, a tear): when Greene came up after the slide, the seam on his right leg was completely torn from his upper thigh to just below his knee.

This, of course, comes after a firestorm of pushback from both fans and players about the state of the 2024 jerseys, designed by Nike but produced by Fanatics, which the naked eye can tell just look more cheaply made. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred (in a manner we've come to expect from him) brushed off concerns in mid-February.

Riley Greene's pant snafu in Tigers-Pirates game is a bad look for MLB commissioner Rob Manfred

Fans and players have noted a myriad of issues with the new uniforms (subscription required), the most obvious being that the player's names are smaller and frequently misaligned on the backs of jerseys. The next issue was the pants, which seemed too see-through for comfort.

Some teams don't even have alternate jerseys available to them yet because of production hold-ups, and the colors of some pants don't match their jerseys. When the season started, viewers were quick to note that players' sweat immediately soaked through both jerseys and pants, and now we have those pants tearing on everyday plays.

There's little love lost for Manfred from fans or players alike, and given his track record it's unlikely that anything will change because of Greene's pants incident. It's something we'll have to live through for this season, but one can only hope that both MLB and Nike/Fanatics will wake up when they're going through production for 2025.