Just days after the Yankees-Red Sox Wild Card game became ESPN’s most-watched baseball game since 1998 , the other networks carrying the MLB postseason decided to pull wild cards of their own.

During the TBS broadcast of Wednesday’s National League Wild Card game, a technical error kept the digital strike zone off the screen during live play. Not only did that prevent armchair umpires at home from doing their job, the TBS technical difficulties also meant that pitch velocities weren’t being shown either.

While the error didn’t seem to be on purpose — though conspiracy theorists pointed out that the strike zone issue coincided with Joe West and his notoriously bad strike zone’s final game as a big-league umpire — the cleaner visual experience was a welcome sight for many.

It can be easy to forget that baseball was played for decades and decades without the strike zone overlaid in front of the catcher, or that those watching at home once had to rely on the broadcaster to audibly point out how fast each pitch came in, and only if they remembered or cared enough to do so.

TBS may have fallen backwards into a good idea, and one that could set themselves apart from their contemporaries’ ultra-modern broadcasts, should they decide to turn a temporary accident into a permanently simplified screen.

There was less of a consensus on the new feature that dominated the FS1 broadcasts from Houston and Tampa Bay on Wednesday.

In place of their previously smooth, streamlined scoreboard design — which was, at best, the superior version of their often changing visual package and at worst, an unremarkable item hidden in the peripherals of the game — was a completely garish score bug that inspired tons of ridicule. People took to Twitter to call it an eyesore , something that looks ripped out of a video game , or worse, an even more dated-looking option  than what they had before.

Michael Dolan, Fox Sports’ Senior Vice President of Design, issued a statement on the network’s revamped design to the Daily News via email.

“The MLB playoffs typically draw larger audiences, so we wanted to capitalize on this,” Dolan wrote. “Textures, colors, shapes, and overall attitude resemble each other, from animations to insert elements including the FOX Box (score bug).”

The most notable feature in the new package is the 3D bases. By adding some texture to the bases, Fox attempted to fix a problem that did not exist. There’s only so much a network can or really should do. With the new look came a completely new typeface, graphics package and chyron style. Those had their issues as well, mainly a misspelled one that emphatically identified the Rays as being from “Tamba Bay”.

The most mild criticism of the new style called it ugly , while the more creative ones said they looked designed by Count Chocula , and more pointed critiques noted that the placement of the score bug obscures play while also looking too cheesy.

The drastic shift in aesthetic was part of the plan, Dolan said. They certainly achieved some of their mission, though the execution remains questionable.

“The design of the FOX Box hits one of our core objectives in the design process, which was to be louder, bolder, more colorful, and infuse the FOX Sports attitude – Same Game, New Attitude,” Dolan wrote. “We believe the 3D bases along with the gamification animations that pop up during big moments like home runs achieves these objectives.”

Overzealous baseball fans hoping to bully them into dropping the new art should not hold their breath.

“Absolutely we are keeping this system throughout the playoffs and will launch next MLB season with this look,” Dolan said in his email, while pointing out that the company refreshes their graphics packages about every three years.

The way these things typically go, the controversial box will soon become ingrained in the game, a non-entity that goes mostly unnoticed. When the media conglomerate first started keeping the score and game clock as a permanent part of football broadcasts in 1994, the head of Fox Sports received death threats . Now, people would riot in the streets if they had to watch an entire NFL game without knowing the score, time, or how many timeouts each team had.

Only time will tell how these 3D bases, bizarre, transparent chyrons and overall unnecessary changes to Fox Sports’ baseball broadcasts will age, but the freshly-revealed aesthetic undoubtedly had a very rough first day on the job.