The St. Louis Cardinals have “soft launched” changes to their iconic “STL” logo via their local TV broadcasts and social media channels. This information courtesy user “BigRed618” at our SportsLogos.Net Message Boards with later additional confirmation by boards member Justin Striebel (username STL FANATIC) and the St. Louis Business Journal.

In a case of “it’s too subtle to notice unless someone pointed it out to you”, the Cards started using the new “STL” logo on graphics posted to their official Twitter account @Cardinals earlier this season. A screencap of one seen here:

Don’t notice the changes? Don’t worry, they’re tough to see until you see them side-by-side. We’re here to help with that.

First of all, please note that the updated logo we’re using in the graphic below has been blown-up from a much smaller social media graphic — so it’s not of the best quality, also we’re just assuming the blue line from the cap logo is being retained and took the courtesy of adding it for comparison purposes.

So what’s different?

Significant differences in the “T”, now with serifs, the angled edges also gone from it

the bottom-left edge of the “S” is updated to match its other end;

overall there are softer, more rounded edges on all the letters.

logo is skinnier than it was before, which I tried to illustrate with the scale line across the bottom

bottom of the “S” has been extended so that it now lines up with the rest of the character

Striebel says he received an email from Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt III confirming the logo will appear in 2020.

“I heard back from Bill DeWitt III.”, Striebel posted, “The Cardinals are indeed intentionally using this new version this year, and they will fully roll it out next season. Mystery solved.”

We’d seen a soft launch of a minor tweak in Major League Baseball several years ago when the Los Angeles Dodgers made modifications to their primary scripted logo and “LA” cap mark in 2011.