The 2025 MLB City Connect Releases in Review

By    |  
May 21, 2025
Since 2021, MLB and Nike have released their “City Connect Edition” jerseys, and new batches of teams have been revealed.

PHOTO: Nike/Facebook

Is it merely a way for Nike and Fanatics to become a cash cow and sell some merchandise? Sure. Are many of them entirely outlandish because they include colors that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual scheme of the franchise? Absolutely. Do they all include press releases from teams going over the details of every minute homage to the city that you would be unable to tell a difference without the MLA-formatted essay required to understand? You betcha!

But sports are also a game of aesthetics. If we watch them in person or on the screen for so long, the players we see look better, right?

Other than the Athletics (because they don’t have an actual city to “connect” to) and the Yankees (because they remain to put themselves on their holier-than-thou Yankee way pedestal. They’re not too good for an advertising patch on the sleeve to make some money, though!) this is the second run of City Connects for the teams that were revealed this year.

Let’s recap a uni season that was certainly filled with highs, lows, upgrades, and downgrades.

Houston Astros

They’re still leaning into the Space-themed nickname, going from the massive “SPACE CITY” on the front to the cleaner “‘Stros” on the front with a shooting star, and it’s a much cleaner look with the off white that doesn’t feel like it’s an alternate! That should be the goal! The previous iteration actually has a nice, simplistic alternate hat with a swirl around the everyday H, which is the one thing that it does better, since Space City is too wordy, and the uniform was just too modern.

Other than the Massive A on the new hat and looking a little too close to the aesthetic of the University of Texas Arlington Mavericks, it’s a classic that just does the same “Yes, we are a Space City” theme in terms of the connect.

Verdict: Upgrade by going back to basics

Washington Nationals

The problem is that you’re immediately downgrading when you go from the grey alternate Japanese Cherry Blossom-themed City Connects that have been retired. There’s a subtle hint to it that’s kept in the new iteration with the flowers around the W, but the bar is too high to clear for it to be necessarily considered an upgrade. However, the powder blue is still nice, the DC crest on the side is a valiant effort that’s a better look than the Walgreens W, It kind of looks like a faded jeans pattern with the addition of the subtle grey city grid, but does anyone actually care about the map of the city?

Is it an homage to the DC traffic? Is it for the Dodgers to be able to map out their route to the White House when they lift a World Series trophy? They should’ve kept it classic or kept the cherry blossoms in that area.

Verdict: Downgrade by having too high a bar to clear

San Francisco Giants

Our last Giants City Connect fell in the department of “looks more like a costume” than an actual uniform. You needed to have them dress up in a baseball Stormtrooper equivalent for the odd fog on white to make sense with the shoulder patches of the Golden Gate Bridge and have the hat, and it just plain didn’t make sense to have white fog on a white jersey with a helmet that had a far too busy bridge on it with the patches.

The redo feels like the San Francisco Giants hired a 17-year-old artist in order to make it young and exciting to the point where it looks like a graphic rather than a uniform. There’s a graffiti wordmark, it’s got black with purple accents and a hat that feels very “Minor League Baseball” in a derogatory sense, but the larger issue is that it needs to be explained. You can’t look at these and know that the purple is supposed to be an homage to lights from the Philmore and the ’60s music scene in San Francisco. It’s a very artsy city with a history of creativity, so it at least nails that funky spirit and has actual color, but at the price of looking like they asked someone to slap some graffiti on there instead of being more concrete with the music scene for it to say “San Francisco.”

This also included the best possible review of a bad jersey from a player that was highlighted by MLB when Jordan Hicks’s official review was “I don’t mind them.” Glowing!

Verdict: At least they added color?

Colorado Rockies

The Rockies’ previous iteration was a direct snapshot of the white and green iconic license plate of Colorado, which was pretty neat in concept. Still, with an odd cut-off going from green to white from the pants to the shoulders that just could’ve been executed better, and it didn’t exactly scream that the Rockies were playing on television. You kind of just need the purple.

The new get-ups are, at first glance, so modern that you may hate them because they’re not exactly like the uniforms the greats of the golden age were wearing, but they look absolutely sweet (ike a pack of vintage early 2000s candy sweet). There are no buttons, but a sunset of a curved pull-over collar with a color scheme that is uniquely Colorado, which is what this is all about, and the blue next to the purple with the aura of Little League mystique (in a complimentary way, this time!). In the same way that we love that certain colleges have color combinations unique to them, this just should be the Rockies’ and the Rockies’ alone, which means they crushed the assignment of making it unique to the area.

Verdict: Another Rockies win in the column of “things that we do great that aren’t actually related to winning.”

Chicago White Sox

The Chicago White Sox went from a fantastic Southside uniform to not turning in their homework at all, much like last season’s effort on the baseball field.

They just made Chicago Bulls jerseys. There are literally theme nights collaborating with teams that do FREE giveaways of collaborations like this already. You can get a baseball-button-up NBA jersey already at stores like Rue21 for less than $20. The winged sock logo is sweet, and it’s an undeniably iconic jersey, but to associate the Reinsdorf championships with winning ways when all of them should be dedicated to Michael Jordan, not the White Sox since 2005. Then, a HUGE gap to 1917 is pretty comical.

Verdict: DNP (but they’re going to sell SO many of these, unfortunately)

Miami Marlins

It’s Miami, and it’s bright lights! It even uses the South Beach color scheme that we loved when the Miami Heat had them as Vice alternates! The problems? They already sort of use black uniforms with some light blue so it doesn’t feel all that different, and the “305” area code on the hat and helmet I’m sure makes Mr. Worldwide Pitbull very happy, but we need to stop with the area codes (and elevation levels if you’re Denver) as being a thing, especially if it looks like an SOS for a franchise that has been losing for a considerable amount of time.

It does say “South Florida,” which is what you want out of a team that has continuously tried and failed to rebrand and find its footing, even though we all just want the original teal pinstripe Marlins from the early 2000s when they were winning the World Series.

Verdict: Downgrade by taking the easy way out

Arizona Diamondbacks

A team that has been all over the place with their branding in their entire existence, what has it been that we’ve wanted for their entirety? The Pop-Tarts were Wild berry-esque, purple, and teal, which they originally had. The sand-colored Serpientes and black with red were actually some of the best of the original batch of City Connects, and this one is essentially that, but just given that 1998 flavor that we wanted with the purple and teal in the first place.

They gave us what we wanted, and Ketel Marte celebrated hitting a bomb into a pool. Wearing these is going to be an absolute chef’s kiss blast from the past. Josh Naylor in those purple pinstripes will look like a glorious Oswald Cobblepot from our cartoons. Bravo, Arizona.

Verdict: Perfect, no notes

Boston Red Sox

The yellow and blue Marathon-inspired unis were incredibly divisive in that the UCLA-looking color scheme is masterful, but just didn’t necessarily embody the classic old age aura of not only a Boston team but, uh… Red Sox?

The retread is about as classic as it gets to the point where it beat-for-beat matches maybe the most historic venue in American sports, Fenway Park, and even looks like a Celtics uniform, truly connecting the town. The hat is perfect, the wordmark is seamless next to the yellow accented numbers, there are minute details that make it look like the left field wall that the old age Boston protective guard will love, but there’s one major problem: it’s A LOT of green to be seen on your television screen when they wear these at home next to a park that is entirely green.

These might need to be strictly away from unis, which takes away from the “Friday Night City Connect home games” the league is trying to make happen a la NFL Color Rush Thursday Nights.

Verdict: They have the right idea

PHOTO: Nike/Facebook

Discover more from Wegryn Enterprises

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Tags:

Categorized: