I don't even know what to say really.
According to various articles, the teams new colors, red-orange, blue and yellow are said to represent sunsets. And oranges. And the sky. And the Sea. And the diversity of Miami. Well, that's quite an order buddy. Are you going to eat all of it?
I believe it was designed in-house, which means the Marlins Design team was too creatively sapped pumping out beer-coozies, cheap ponchos and bobble-heads to back the creative truck up and look at the big picture. It's not their fault. They probably work their fingers to the bone getting out the multitude of deliverables a MLB team needs. But ownership should have brought in a new fresh team or contracted the job to a reputable design studio. If this is how it went.
What irks me is the historical opportunity wasted here. It's not the tshirts to the local Fourth of July softball tourny. It's a symbol of an entire city and the closest thing America has to a national dress. A baseball hat is uniquely American as much as a kilt is Scottish. It represents where you're from (Northerner? West Coast?) and a bit of your outlook on life (Boston = Fanatic, Yankees = Classic, Chicago = Dreamer, etc).
It's not that hard. Design is not cancer research. It's a communication problem solved with taste and craftsmanship. This logo didn't need to allude to 7 things. It simply needed to state 2. The city it represents and the profession it occupies. These two simple ideas are where they had to revisit every round of designs. If you go back to the brief, you'll never lose sight of that target. But when you don't, you end up trying to shoehorn into a mark too many "brand messages", while ignoring the rich aesthetic history of your client's world.
And you can do that many ways. With simple colors. With a nice, solid wordmark. Well, like this team, the 1968 Miami Marlins.
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