Ranking Every MLB City Connect Jersey (2026)
Who has the best City Connect threads?
Photo via Major League Baseball, Nike Splinter baseball
If you’ve regularly watched professional baseball games in the last few years, there’s little doubt you’ve seen teams wearing getups that seem colorfully strange or vivid, and there’s a good chance that these are MLB’s City Connect jerseys.
Major League Baseball’s City Connect uniforms are a partnership with Nike to infuse a little levity and culture into the relentless, grinding marathon that is the typical, 162-game MLB season. The idea, as the name would imply, is to tap into the unique cultural and geographic aspects of each team’s home city, to create uniforms that project a sense of place. The perfect City Connect uniform is that one that both evokes the history and vibe of its setting, and also simply looks cool. You know, something you’d actually want to buy from the merch shop, and wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen in. Make no mistake, the primary function of said jerseys are to bump merch sales, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with them.
For our purposes here, we’re focusing on the “looking cool” function. I’m about to critique every single MLB City Connect jersey currently being used (with new 2026 season updates) on a mostly visual basis, rather than putting a ton of emphasis into the meanings or stories behind them. Suffice to say, most every City Connect jersey has some kind of meaningful story about the club or city that inspired it.
Let’s instead focus on which ones look best, in our humble opinion, and represent the best overall designs. Whose threads are top tier?
A Note on Participating Teams
Of the 30 teams in MLB, 28 of them are active participants in the City Connect program. The earliest jerseys in the series were introduced in 2021, with subsequent new uniforms joining the pack each year. Most teams are now on at least their second City Connect iteration, in fact.
But wait: What of the two non-participating teams? They are:
The New York Yankees: Perpetually taking themselves far too seriously, it’s the glory and majesty of the Bronx Bombers. Why are we not surprised that the only MLB team with a strict “no beards or long hair” policy, still alive and well in 2024 before being tweaked in 2025 to allow for “well-groomed beards,” would also consider their home uniforms to be too sacred to sully by association with City Connect? To say that they’re being buzzkills here is an understatement–the entire rest of the league is on board with this opportunity for marketing, but you think your Yankee pinstripes are too holy to set aside a few times per year? You don’t want to see Aaron Judge or Jazz Chisholm Jr. rocking a Statue of Liberty-inspired getup? Someone tell these guys to remove the bat-sized stick from their asses.
The “Sacramento” Athletics: Unlike the Yanks, the Athletics definitely have an excuse for not participating here. I’m sure that the hapless A’s would probably be thrilled with the opportunity to participate in the City Connect series if they could, but it’s a little hard to connect with your city when you’ve recently abandoned it, and are still years away from a full-time replacement. The A’s upcoming move to Las Vegas isn’t even scheduled to actually occur until 2028, and that’s if all goes as planned in building a new stadium. Meanwhile, 2024 was their last season playing in the airy confines of the crumbling Oakland Coliseum. For the next several seasons at least, their home ballpark will remain in West Sacramento, at the facility that currently houses the Giants’ Triple A affiliate. If the City Connect series is still around in 2028, we look forward to seeing the gaudy and no doubt nightmarish uniforms that Las Vegas will inspire at that time.
So with that said, let’s get to ranking the existing MLB City Connect jerseys, starting with the worst of the worst.
28. Los Angeles Dodgers
The Dodgers may be able to front the scariest lineup in baseball, but their forays into the City Connect series have been marked by results that were first pedestrian, and then confusing. The Dodgers whiffed on their original City Connect design, which was a classic case of having too much esteem for their own classic, iconic uniforms. This led to a baseline standard Dodgers uniform that just had “Los Dodgers” scrawled across the front, and basically no other alterations. It was the laziest of all the City Connect offerings, and routinely trashed by fans.
To their credit, the Dodgers organization seemed to understand that these gripes weren’t going away, so they then became the first team in baseball to debut a second, all new City Connect design in 2024. And unfortunately, although the second version is an improvement in some areas, it makes some absolutely bizarre design choices that still leave the venerable Dodgers at the bottom of the barrel.
The front of the current Dodgers City Connect is actually okay, with a new slashed “Los Angeles” centerpiece that looks pretty striking. The off white coloring is okay, looking fine on its own but somewhat dirty next to a genuinely white backdrop. The odd thing here is the little specks of color throughout, which are apparently meant to represent a “galaxy of stars,” but are so tiny that they’re practically impossible to distinguish in anything but an extreme closeup. It’s as if they never considered that people would be seeing these through TV screens, rather than standing directly in front of a player and squinting at their chest. Many comparisons have already been made to Strawberry Pop-Tarts frosting, or Funfetti cupcakes, both of which this evokes. But it’s the BACK of the jersey that really screws over this attempt at a reboot, particularly the absolutely abhorrent decision to have the players’ names obscure the bottom part of their numbers. In some numbers, this doesn’t really matter than much, but look at the hilarious way it butchers Clayton Kershaw’s #22 below. Who in their right mind looked at that and gave it the thumbs up? Your jersey should not look like it had a catastrophic Microsoft WordArt disaster.
27. St. Louis Cardinals
Another case where someone didn’t take the assignment seriously enough, made especially bad by the fact that these debuted near the end of the initial City Connect cycle, when so many examples of them had already been released. The team made a big deal in its announcement to stress that they’d never actually worn a primarily red uniform before, but guess what: Everyone on Earth still associates red with the Cardinals anyway, because it’s the secondary color of all their uniforms. “It’s mostly red” is not some revelation here.
Everything else on the jersey is practically the same, while “The Lou” across the chest seemed to inspire a fair amount of derision from St. Louis residents and other Midwesterners. The pants? They just ignore the pants. Even the wavy, squiggly “STL” of the hat looks clumsy, and the rest is almost all negative space. When these were unveiled, I saw someone describe them as evoking the simplified jerseys players wear for batting practice, and I haven’t been able to get that out of my mind since. Suffice to say, any City Connect debuting in the third year of the initiative should ideally have had more personality than this. The Cardinals tried to play things entirely too safe.
26. Cincinnati Reds
I seemed to be in the minority of the people who quite enjoyed the original Cincinnati Reds City Connect uniforms, which were one of the best of the black-focused expressions, pulsing with a sinister-looking vibe of red underneath–they looked like something an evil baseball team might have worn in TRON. Not many entries in the series had a particular “imposing” look to them, but those did.
Someone out there, however, clearly took offense to there not being enough of the team’s titular color present, which has resulted in one of the most monochromatic City Connects ever unveiled for the 2026 season, with the slogan “Rooted in Red.” And sure, they definitely succeeded on that particular, obsessive front, to the detriment of literally everything else about the design. This is just too fucking red, and I say that as a person with red as his favorite color. I can’t even look at these for more than a minute; it feels like my rods and cones are going on the fritz. Even the black pinstripe makes it look suspiciously similar to last year’s (also crappy) White Sox City Connect rebrand. Good on them, I guess, for choosing to go all-in on the pants as well, but I need some kind of island of sanity in this uniform from the color red. It feels like I’m looking at a fever dream.
25. Texas Rangers
We like a warm, sun-parched desert theme with our City Connect jerseys, something that was seen in the original Diamondbacks design, which took its cappuccino coloring from desert sands. This new 2026 Rangers one, on the other hand … well, it’s the polar opposite of the previous Rangers design, which I often used as the post child for overdesigned City Connect offerings. This one is pretty much as simple as they can possibly get: Red shirt, white pants, call it a day. And that’s a shame, because I really genuinely like the look of the “TEJAS” and the call-out to Texas’ proximity to Mexico, although even there, Houston is physically closer. At least this jersey doesn’t have any references to mythical creatures that require thousands of words in an essay to explain, but they’re really running the risk of being entirely boring and forgettable in this 2.0 round.
The sentiment I keep coming back to is that nothing in this jersey says “major league team” to me–it looks more like a college jersey, bereft of more dramatic details. It looks like something that the opponent team in a little league baseball movie might wear, a uniform where the audience isn’t meant to take any notice of it. I can’t summon much enthusiasm here.
24. New York Mets
There are a lot of ways to approach a City Connect uniform, but it feels like “drab” should never apply as a descriptor. And yet, that’s the direction the Mets decided to go in with this dark gray number with black pinstripes, paired with plain white pants. They attempt to liven up the design with some little splashes of dark purple, but against the slate gray background it’s unfortunately easy to miss those details. Meanwhile, the bridge-themed hat frames the player’s head rather awkwardly, making it look like they’re wearing an old-timey bank teller’s visor. The whole thing feels a bit confused.
And you have to mention it: The first design instinct for the New York Mets in putting together a City Connect jersey was to embrace the color gray, and pinstripes? How can that not help but evoke the Yankees across town, the most famous pinstriped club in the world of sports? Of all the allusions for the Mets to make, you would think that evoking the Yankees of all teams would be the absolute last one they would choose. Very odd decision.
23. Chicago White Sox
Now here we have a travesty–not the fact that these new 2025 White Sox City Connects were designed to reference the crosstown Chicago Bulls, but the fact that they replaced City Connect jerseys that were widely considered to be some of the very best that the program had ever produced. The black, pinstriped “Southside” jerseys the team debuted a couple of years ago were smash hits, and when a team produces a City Connect that resonates with the fans in that kind of way, they should think long and hard about replacing it with anything else … much less jerseys that are as confusing as these ended up being.
In a vacuum, I don’t even hate these new White Sox uniforms that much. But the tops are rough–at a glance, you can’t even tell what team it’s supposed to be. The use of a simple “CHICAGO” on the chest feels extremely vague, although I do rather like the winged, white sock logo. The pants also fit the ensemble pretty well, with their black base and red piping. But the top has a cheap feel to it, looking like some kind of unlicensed merch you would find a street vendor selling in front of the United Center before a Bulls game. And lest we forget, the team goes out of its way to not mention that the Bulls are also owned by White Sox billionaire owner Jerry Reinsdorf, so this mostly amounts to a wealthy, stingy owner engaging in some cross promotion of his two terrible teams, while throwing out a beloved uniform at the same time. Bummers all around.
22. Chicago Cubs
The Cubs can lay claim to a rather boring City Connect design, another team that took the safe road to something that looks fine, but doesn’t really have any enduring appeal. The “Wrigleyville” on the chest isn’t bad–they might as well lean into that, when the team is famous for a certain style of inebriated fan patrolling the neighborhood yelling such things. The stars on the cap, a reference to the Chicago flag, are a nicely understated touch as well, but in general these are hurting for some kind of a bolder stylistic choice on a deeper level. They’re just forgettable, and simultaneously too similar to the first generation Kansas City Royals design. If both of these teams ever somehow ended up wearing these jerseys to the same game during interleague play, you’d barely be able to tell which team was which, except for the Cubs’ navy pants. They even have practically the exact same light blue undershirts. Uninspired.
Note: Oddly, the Cubs seem to have replaced this City Connect design with a baby blue set of “alternates,” but Nike and MLB doesn’t recognize those other new jerseys as officially being part of the City Connect series. That leaves the “Wrigleyville” design as the only one that the Cubs have technically had.
21. Washington Nationals
The 2.0 iterations of City Connect uniforms–teams unveiling their second versions in the City Connect program–seem to be revealing that most of these teams used up their best A material in the 1.0 versions, which doesn’t exactly bode well for the idea of City Connect jerseys in general. The Nationals had an intriguing, if not-quite-top tier example in their original heather gray design, which was wrapped with the delicate pink cherry blossoms that symbolize Washington D.C. I really liked the floral aspect of those jerseys, but felt that they weren’t quite bold enough, and hoped that the Nationals might crank up the excitement factor in the 2.0 update.
Instead, the Nationals went even more dull and monotone in their 2.0 City Connects, the majority of which are a blue-gray that doesn’t catch the eye, traced by a street map of Washington D.C. that is so faded it’s basically invisible. Little flourishes like the light blue or pink of the sleeves do little to elevate the overall feel of monotony. One thing I do like more is the multiple, redesigned versions of the Washington “W,” both in the blocky, chunky W of the batting helmets and the more ornate W of the ball caps, which incorporates what looks like the spire of the Capitol building. But the loss of the cherry blossoms on the jersey, instead reduced to the cartoony little icons on the hat, is a blow. Where the original Nationals design had a certain elegance to it, these don’t stir nearly as much reaction either way.
20. Milwaukee Brewers
The Brewers have typically gone lighthearted and fun in their City Connect stylings, and I will definitely miss seeing the 1.0 design’s “Brew Crew” splashed across the chest, which made them sound pleasantly like a beer league softball team. There were some elements of the original design that were undeniably messy, like the odd attempt to fuse both “MKE” and the 414 area code into the same hat symbol, and the 2.0 design debuted for 2026 is clearly trying to clean things up a bit.
To that end, there are some elements here that I love, like the “Barrelman” mascot who appears on the sleeve, but they’re somewhat lacking in personality compared with the original effort–I would have put that Barrelman right on the hat and gone full camp, personally. The blue shade is unobtrusive, but less inspired than Minnesota’s use of blue to represent their water features, and the “WISCO” across the front is a truly odd choice that feels like grasping at straws for something of significance. I’m from Chicago, and I’ve never once in my life heard someone from Wisconsin drop the phrase “Wisco.” Has anyone actually ever said this? Brewers fandom seems divided on the subject. All in all, these need more beer to suds them up.
19. Detroit Tigers
These City Connect uniforms are a real mixed bag. I find the more vertical-focused pattern interesting, an aspect that not many City Connects feature. The colors are eye-catching and moody, if not super unique. I personally think “Motor City” across the chest is pretty cool, a proud acknowledgement of the city’s industrial history. Texturally, these look interesting a well–they look like they’re made from some kind of sweat-wicking material from the not-too-distant future.
But with that said … it’s the hat of all things that practically ruins this one for me. It’s the single most boring and thoughtless of all the City Connect hats. This plain-ass “Detroit” hat looks like something you would buy for a nephew you don’t particularly like at an airport gift shop, or a freebie being handed out in a park by the chamber of commerce. How is this the official accompaniment? It’s like they designed the jersey, and then forgot about the hat until the night before they were being unveiled. Partial credit.
18. Baltimore Orioles
I complained about the lack of the titular bird in the original Baltimore City Connect jerseys, and lo and behold, one has been presented to me. It’s certainly an improvement from the prior design, which had followed a trend of several 1.0 City Connect designs going all in on cool black theming, but with little substance, which came off feeling hopelessly generic. These ones, on the other hand, are a nice blend of classical and minimalist, incorporating the team colors you would expect to see while also employing a cream-colored base better than some similar City Connects. I like the subtle 3D effect of the “BMORE” lettering, although the hat “B” might be a bit on the overwrought side. And who doesn’t enjoy a friendly perching oriole paying the “R” a visit?
These look classy without being totally staid, and engaging without being overly busy, which is a cardinal sin of some of the other 2.0 designs. It’s the sort of design that is destined to fall in the middle of ranking lists, because it’s not very loud and doesn’t stand out prominently one way or the other.
Orioles unveil Camden Yards-inspired City Connect jerseys.
They’re here: www.thebanner.com/sports/oriol…
— Andy Kostka (@afkostka.bsky.social) Apr 9, 2026 at 10:01 AM
17. Cleveland Guardians
These look … fine. They might be the most blandly acceptable of all the City Connect jerseys, in fact. They’re certainly very “All American” in appearance. The colors appear to be an inversion of some of the classic uniforms from their past. The texture of the jersey is interesting, and the subtle threading of black through the dark navy is nice, giving it an almost denim-like look. I suppose you could say that this is meant to evoke the working-class nature or image of Cleveland, though that might just be the desperate rationalization of an ailing mind. Regardless, this City Connect is clean, simple and uncomplicated, but not thrilling in any particular respect.
Also: I know it’s basically just their current logo, but I wouldn’t blame someone from outside Cleveland seeing this hat and assuming it was some kind of Cubs hat. That’s just the risk they were running in making it a plain “C,” when there’s a much better known team brand that also has an unadorned “C” as the central symbol on its hat. Just sayin’.
16. Tampa Bay Rays
Well these are certainly bold, there’s no denying that. I actually love the general color scheme that was chosen for the Rays’ uniforms, and the hat that goes with it, with its Manta imagery, is excellent. At the same time, I think these suffer from some very easily fixed design issues. Why is the “Tampa Bay” on the front of the jerseys only an outline? If it was filled in, it would be much easier to see and read. As is, it’s a serious legibility issue from more than a few feet away. Ditto for the numbers on the back of the jersey. The player names, on the other hand, stand out in a great way through the use of neon, Mountain Dew-esque yellow green. So why not have all the text be that legible?
The base color for these, meanwhile, is actually a dark gray rather than the black it might initially appear, but it has a sort of “dirty” look to it because it’s been given an effect similar to a tic weave suit where tiny bits of the other colors are dotted into it. I’m not sure the effect really works–it sort of makes the jerseys look like they were once black, but have now been through the washing machine too many times. In general, these uniforms are a mixed bag.
15. Kansas City Royals
The original Royals City Connect uniforms had no particular, glaring falls–their only real failure was that there was little to set them apart, and the navy blue coloration made them look conspicuously similar to the Chicago Cubs City Connects, which were also one of the least inspired of the original series. Like some of the other entries on this list, they needed the long sleeve undershirts (a bright baby blue) to give them more visual interest, and felt lacking when those undershirts weren’t present.
The new 2026 City Connects are still on the relatively minimalist side, but I think it works better now than it once did. The ombré effect between blue and an appropriately royal purple is pulling a lot of weight throughout, particularly in the simple but effective hat. That’s supposed to be a crown symbol, by the way–at first it looks a bit like it would be the logo of some strange European ecommerce app, but once you know what it is, I think it’s a fun idea. These are more playful than the previous jerseys, and the Royals could use something like this to make a team that is rarely very flashy stand out from the pack. The team, for what it’s worth, calls it “a nod to the tones of a Midwestern summer sunset and the blue of water flowing through Kansas City’s more than 200 fountains.”
14. Houston Astros
Debuting the 2.0 design of a City Connect jersey is proving to be difficult for some teams–look at the Dodgers, who took maybe the worst 1.0 design and then topped it with an even more nonsensical 2.0 design. The Houston Astros, on the other hand, cracked our previous top 10 with their initial City Connect design but have fallen somewhat with the 2.0 design.
These are jerseys that are begging to be called “clean,” a word that shows up quite a few times in the unveiling story on the Astros’ website. They are certainly that, but they’re also dangerously close to staid. I don’t love the sheer amount of white negative space on these, nor the somewhat conventional front lettering, though “STROS” is a fine nod to the team nickname. As with the previous design, the best aspects are the splashes of color, which reference the iconic “Tequila Sunrise” jerseys of yore, but there’s not quite enough of it here–particularly if a player has the pant legs rolled down. You really want the Altuve look (pants rolled up, showing off the socks) even more with these, for the sake of the contrast from the “Afterburner” orange socks, which I do like.
On the other hand, I hate it when City Connect jerseys attempt to make themselves more interesting with little details that are so fine, that they’re practically invisible to the naked eye, and the so-called “lunar pattern” on the blue trim of these jerseys is a prime example–you’d barely be able to see this patterning if you were holding the jersey, much less watching a game. You can’t give a team credit for design elements that are so teensy they’re essentially invisible. These jerseys are fine, but the 1.0 versions built around the rich blue coloration were simply more dynamic.
13. San Francisco Giants
I’m not falling over myself to praise the 2.0 versions of the San Francisco Giants City Connect uniforms, but at the same time I do think I like them marginally more than the original version, which is more than I can say for most of the 2.0 designs. The problem with the orange, “San Francisco Fog”-themed original jerseys is that they couldn’t quite translate their solid, heady concept into reality–the gradient effect just made aspects such as the numbers harder to read, and there were some oddly truncated bits such as the Golden Gate Bridge in the hat, which would have looked better if it had wrapped all the way around.
These 2.0 Giants City Connects introduced in 2025, meanwhile, take a somewhat simpler design aesthetic–which seems to be a trend across the league, unfortunately–but executes it in a way that is fairly bold and fun. It strays a little close to being a nondescript black jersey, a problem possessed by the Orioles City Connects, but you can’t deny that the GIANTS text on the front of these really pops strongly. I like the loopy script, which the team says is inspired by vintage concept posters that hark back to the musical history of the Bay area, although to be honest it feels a bit more inspired by street art/graffiti than music to me. The musical influence is more clearly seen in the groovy glove patch on the uniform’s right sleeve, which makes good use of the swirling orange and purple dueling motif. The so-called “sound waves,” meanwhile, help break up all the black and give the background more texture. The more I look at these, the more I begin to genuinely like them.
12. Pittsburgh Pirates
The original Pirates City Connect always seemed to get lumped among the most hated and oft-criticized of the designs, but I never disliked it nearly as much as others did, although I join the feeling that the “PGH” smeared across it never inspired much excitement. But I’ve always liked the shades of yellow and gold they employ, and I’m inclined to give the Pirates more leeway than most of the teams that have wanted to favor mostly black designs. It’s their thing; it works for them. I’ll also still contend that no one will EVER probably look cooler wearing a City Connect jersey than Carlos Santana did while hitting a walk-off home run into the Allegheny.
Another thing that both the old and the new 2.0 Pirates City Connects do well is projecting a sense of texture, which really comes through on the hats here, which have the look and feel of a weathered treasure map. The new design for 2026 commits itself more strongly to the “pirate” theme, which could easily have ventured into the tweet or silly, but instead looks nicely imposing. The sharp-edge “PIRATES” font is an inspired choice, even if it does evoke a Todd McFarlane-esque Spawn aesthetic. Regardless, the Pirates look like a team to be taken more seriously in these, which bodes well for a franchise that is hopefully on the rise with a core of young star players.
11. Miami Marlins
The 2.0 City Connect design for the Miami Marlins retains the focus on very bright coloration we saw in the original design, but the way it’s worked into a more predominantly black jersey kills some of the ebullience of the vibe for me. The 1.0 Marlins City Connects were some of the most joyous looking of the original series–I like how their colors evoked the kind of fruit drink you might get in a baggie at a street market. These 2.0 designs, on the other hand, are perhaps more evocative of the Miami night life, which is more in the vein of how fans might have expected the design to look in the first place … but that doesn’t make it better.
In reality, most of the individual elements here register as downgrades. The “Miami” across the front isn’t as unique as the swoopier script of the previous uniform, and what is going on with the hats, which just slap the city’s area code across their front and call it a day? Frankly, that choice in particular feels like a fallback for a designer who couldn’t think of something else to capture the city. The teal and pink is a good foundation in theory, and there are certainly worse City Connects out there, but there’s definitely some squandered potential here.
10. Philadelphia Phillies
This is another one of the City Connect entries that I had the most difficult time ranking, because I admire the very bold choices that were made in many respects, but there are simultaneously elements that I don’t think work very well. Let’s start out with the good: The Liberty Bell hat is really cool, and I’d replace the regular “P” with it immediately. I would wear the hell out of this hat.
The jersey itself engenders a lot more debate. The ombre effect between the darker and lighter blue is something that I wasn’t sure I liked when I first saw it, but after seeing it in motion I think I’ve come around on both the bold inversion of traditional Phillies colors and the gradient they used to do it. There’s certainly nothing conservative about this. With that said, though, the gothic “PHILLY” text on the chest just doesn’t feel right to me in the context of this uniform. There’s something indistinctly try-hard about it. I see it and picture it sitting on the clothing rack next to Tapout or Ed Hardy shirts. A little tweak might bump these up to the next level. That said, from what I’ve seen, the famously disdainful Philadelphia fanbase has not been kind to this design since it was first unveiled.
9. Boston Red Sox
You can say this for the Red Sox: In their two City Connect designs to date, they’ve never felt tied at the hip to either history or traditional aesthetics of their iconic uniforms. The original Red Sox City Connect was violently yellow in color, so highlighter bright that it actually made you thankful they paired it with plain white pants to avoid overkill. It was an initially unpalatable look that grew on me in its boldness, and I appreciated little touches like the stenciled-looking lettering.
The 2.0 Red Sox designs preserved some of those types of details, while making an obvious color swap that ultimately works well all the same: When your park is famously associated with something called the “green monster,” then you might as well take advantage of it, right? As I’ve observed before, green in general is one of MLB’s most underutilized colors, and this herbal, rosemary-like tone is like nothing else in the game today, while still keeping a few splashes of the bright yellow seen in the first design. The only place this one plays things too conservatively was not making any particular attempt at a new hat design, but considering the connection between Boston and the Irish, you know a green hat is going to play there.
8. Minnesota Twins
The last of the participating teams to unveil its first-ever City Connect jersey, the Twins end up falling right into the middle of the pack in the ranking, which seems somehow apropos for an AL Central winner famous for never going anywhere in the playoffs. The Twins were actually the first North American sports franchise to name itself not for its city but its entire state, so it’s fitting that their City Connect features more of a state-centric vibe, centered around Minnesota’s famous status as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” This no doubt made the choice of blue as a base color pretty easy for them, and the jersey draws the eye to it with some nicely subtle patterning, with several shades of blue run through with black striations intended to conjure the image of the rippling surface of a body of water. The hat is also intriguing: To simply include the state outline in front is a rather bold decision, effectively removing any mention of the team itself. Surely, if someone saw you walking down the street in this hat without much MLB knowledge, they would assume it was something purchased at a tourist shop in some rural B&B town. I admire the pluck, but the connection to baseball should probably be in there somewhere.
All in all, there are some definite crossovers here stylistically with the City Connects of the Mariners in particular, particularly in the shade of blue, though the M’s design reads as both sharper and cleaner. I also think it’s a bit of an odd choice to extend the blue of the jerseys to the pants here, but not the rippled pattern, as the pants are solid blue in the same shade. What, did they get cold feet? It feels like a precursor to simply switching to white pants, which even the team’s own announcement implies is a possibility. It’s not a great look to immediately start walking back your convictions before these things have even been worn on the field a single time, but the overall results are still pretty cool.
7. Arizona Diamondbacks
There’s no denying that the D-Backs went pretty damn bold, at least in terms of coloration, in their City Connect 2.0 designs. As for the evolution from the 1.0 jerseys, this is actually on the more subtle side, as it retains many of the same design elements, but then dramatically switches things up by embracing Diamondbacks history via color, throwing itself entirely into the eye-catching teal and royal purple combination. There are some other teams making solid use of purple in their City Connects, but the D-backs are really laying claim to the color here.
I love that they retained “Serpientes,” which is just about the coolest thing that any team has scrawled across its chest in this series, and they doubled down with the snake theme (another request of mine) by extending it to the hat as well. In my opinion, the color swap is an upgrade over the sandy, desert-inspired cream tone of the previous uniforms, a choice where you could see the thought process that was being employed, but still one that felt a little awkward depending upon the lighting. These City Connects, on the other hand, run the risk of feeling entirely too bold or garish, but the deep historical ties between the franchise and these shades of purple and teal, as seen in their 2001 World Series victory, gives them free license to go nuts. And that is definitely more fun than playing it safe. And to reiterate: The team should ditch their strange bobcat mascot and go even more snake with some kind of serpent theme. The time for maximum serpentitude is upon us. Embrace it.
The Diamondbacks released their new City Connect uniforms today, which are now in the team shop.
They will debut the jerseys on Friday vs. the Dodgers, wear them again on Saturday and then every Friday home game the rest of the year.
— Alex Weiner (@alexjweiner.bsky.social) May 5, 2025 at 4:39 PM
6. San Diego Padres
This is a case where I really enjoy a City Connect 2.0 design on its own merits, but man am I going to miss the colorful lunacy of the original design, which will probably remain my all-time favorite City Connect expression. Never have I gone from revulsion to adoration like I did with that first, infectiously joyous, spray-painted Padres design, combining colors like bright yellow, hot pink, white and mint green. What sounded like a child’s coloring book disaster all came together to make something greater than the sum of its parts. If the Padres were even going to think about replacing that virulently colorful design, it had to be with something pretty engaging.
Thankfully, this new 2.0 design for 2026 is also fairly inspired, even if it’s not nearly as out-there as the prior one. Día de los Muertos is a great design aesthetic to use as a starting point, and the skull-faced woman on the sleeve of the jersey, flanked by candles, looks really great in particular. The combo of blue, orange and pink is sharp, although it does call to mind the “tequila sunrise” Astros uniform to some degree. A primarily white hat is an interesting choice as well, one we don’t see too often. It’s all sharp and clean, but it’s not as wildly vibrant as it was before. I’ll just have to settle for competency here.
5. Los Angeles Angels
Going too subtle or understated is a trap that some of these City Connect uniforms have fallen into, but I would point toward the Angels’ City Connects as my go-to example of what understated looks like when employed effectively. The base color of the uniform undergoes a subtle evolution from stark white to a warmer cream, and I love the look of the bubbly, retro font and the halo around “Angels.” The whole look is centered around retro California surfing culture, and it projects the warmth and sunniness of the place.
Personally, something about it to me evokes the kind of branding you might have found in your favorite 1970s pizza parlor, but I honestly don’t think that’s a bad thing. I can’t blame someone for putting these low in their rankings for pointing out that it takes very few risks, because this is one of the safer City Connect designs out there. But unlike some of the others, I believe this captures a timeless quality that is absent in many of the other, basic designs. It’s the most effortless of all of them.
4. Colorado Rockies
It was a minor bummer to say goodbye to the 1.0 version of the Rockies’ City Connect uniforms, because they were some of the sharper and more elegant of the first batch–I appreciated their use of green, which is a very underutilized color in general for MLB, especially considering that the Athletics (a team without a city) can’t even participate in the series. It was a logical way to highlight the wilderness that surrounds the Denver area on the footsteps of the Rocky Mountains. Thankfully, I’m happy to see that the new Rockies 2.0 City Connects are just as engaging, and actually far more colorful. And in my eyes, that’s rarely a bad thing for a City Connect jersey.
These 2.0 jerseys are vivacious, coming in alongside teams such as the Marlins and Padres as some of the most purely colorful in the series. They’re described as being representative of the sunrises and sunsets that are given extra life by the Rocky Mountains, and as a result are dappled with not just Rockies mountain purple but also light blue, brilliant orange and pink (another underutilized color). The numbers on the back are an extra punchy shade of vibrant gold, while the understated hat design (but not colors) zero in on the mountain theme of the previous City Connects. These are bold in a great way, looking like they would belong to a team with an exciting culture.
3. Toronto Blue Jays
The Blue Jays recently debuted City Connect uniforms and they are a testament to how well a cohesive theme can bring everything together. These are dubbed the team’s “Night Mode” jerseys, with the concept being that they reflect the energy of the evening in a huge world city, and are something the Jays will only wear at home night games. I love how all-encompassing the theme is, which helps to give meaning to the neon color scheme. The futuristic cityscape of Toronto across the chest looks quite striking. You might be able to argue that the contrast of colors makes it a little hard to parse the word “TORONTO” front and center, but they are definitely offset in a great way by the bright red undershirts. Even the maple leaf hat looks both clean and attention grabbing. All in all, everything here is buoyed by the team choosing a good unifying theme and then sticking to that aesthetic.
2. Atlanta Braves
It was hard not to love the original 1.0 City Connect designs for the Braves, with the one caveat being that they may have been drawing a bit too obviously on history. These duds, highlighted by a graceful, swooping “The A,” were very obviously inspired by the historic jerseys worn by Hank Aaron in his era, and simply given a round of fairly subtle tweaks. All the same, the combination of vintage and modern stylings made them feel both familiar and timeless.
The new 2.0 Braves design, on the other hand, ventures a little bit further afield while also drawing on some obvious inspiration from 1980s Braves aesthetics. I find myself really taken with the powder blue and loopy writing here the more I look at it, and it’s cute to see them embrace a lower-case “a” on the hats, rather than the more dramatically serifed capital A that it was before. These uniforms feel light and vivacious, without looking like they’re trying too hard–like the visual translation of the experience of watching Ronald Acuña Jr. swipe a base. They look even cooler with the yellow undershirts, but the hat would have pretty much sold me regardless.
1. Seattle Mariners
Hell, these might be the best actual uniforms in the entire Mariners rotation. The color contrast between the primary deep-sea blue and golden yellow is pretty close to perfection, as is the creative choice of script, which has an almost embossed, raised look to it.
The hat is one of the absolute best of the City Connect standards, with the trident “M” motif linking symbolically to the Mariners’ own home run trident celebration. An odd thing about these jerseys: The Mariners will wear them with both white and black pants, and they somehow look great either way. Against the white, this jersey just looks clean and classic, drawing more attention to details like the matching blue socks. Against the black pants, these take on a cooler and imposing attitude, drawing attention to the matching black hat brim. Everyone looks good in these things. If I lived in Seattle, the hat is one I would rarely be without. Top tier City Connect material.
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