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There has been a lot of conversation about whether Josh Thole or Erik Kratz is the better backup catcher for the Blue Jays in the long run. R.A. Dickey has stated that he prefers Thole as his catcher, and Thole will be the one behind the plate this afternoon. Now that the catching assignment has been set, it's time to look at a much more important question about Dickey's preference: what he will wear to the game. In a noontime chat with Brendan Kennedy of the Toronto Star, I asked if the Blue Jays have announced which road uniform they were going to be wearing for Opening Day at Tropicana Field.
Minor Leaguer: Will the Blue Jays wear their unlucky grey road uniforms today, or for any other road game this year? Should they?
Brendan Kennedy: Ha! Hey ML. As you probably know, Chris Creamer has done a lot of work on that front and found the greys were the worst-performing uniform in the majors last year. But the players didn't seem to know that. Anyway, I expect Dickey to choose the blues. But we'll see in a little bit.
Brendan Kennedy: Oh yeah, and equipment managers told me it's usually the starting pitcher who chooses the road uniform.
Brendan Kennedy: If starter has no preference, equipment guy chooses himself.
Of course, Chris Creamer is the founder of Sportslogos.net, who started a wonderful database listing the uniforms worn by each team for every single game last year. It was from that database that he found out that the Blue Jays had a 5-19 record while wearing the greys in 2013.
Sportslogos.net doesn't have a database per player per game, so I did some digging through our photo bank to see what R.A. Dickey wore in each of his 16 road starts in 2013:
| Date | Opp | Result | Decision | Uniform |
| Apr 13 | KCR | W3-2 | W(1-2) | Blue |
| Apr 23 | BAL | L3-4 | L(2-3) | Grey |
| Apr 28 | NYY | L2-3 | L(2-4) | Grey |
| May 9 | TBR | L4-5 | Grey | |
| May 30 | ATL | L3-11 | L(4-7) | Grey |
| Jun 5 | SFG | W4-0 | W(5-7) | Blue |
| Jun 10 | CHW | L6-10 | L(5-8) | Blue |
| Jun 15 | TEX | W6-1 | W(6-8) | Blue |
| Jun 26 | TBR | W3-0 | W(7-8) | Blue |
| Jul 11 | CLE | L2-4 | L(8-10) | Grey |
| Jul 31 | OAK | W5-2 | Blue | |
| Aug 5 | SEA | W3-1 | W(9-11) | Blue |
| Aug 16 | TBR | L4-5 | Blue | |
| Aug 21 | NYY | L2-4 | L(9-12) | Blue |
| Sep 6 | MIN | W6-5 | W(12-12) | Grey |
| Sep 22 | BOS | L2-5 | L(13-13) | Blue |
(Road game results data via Baseball-Reference)
So to summarize, Dickey wore blue 10 times and grey six times, with the Jays going 6-4 while blue and 1-5 while grey.
Of course, there is no way that the colour of the uniform a player is wearing can affect results by this much, blah blah blah blah blah, correlation is not causation blah blah blah. Disclaimer and logic aside, I think it'd be a good idea for Dickey to choose blue tonight, wouldn't it?
UPDATE
Victory!
The #BlueJays are wearing their alternate blue jerseys with the road gray pants for #OpeningDay. #MLB #Rays
— Scott MacArthur (@TSNScottyMac) March 31, 2014
I'm late with this, @Minor_Leaguer, but #bluejays are indeed wearing their more favourable blue road uniforms today. #fundamentals
— Brendan Kennedy (@BKennedyStar) March 31, 2014