As you can see above, Atlanta rolled out an unexpected change to their navy road alternate jersey during today’s spring training workout. The grey headspoon piping and sleeve trim are now red.
Here’s how it looks from the back:
Is this just a spring training thing? Nope — it’s confirmed in the 2024 MLB Style Guide:
As I reported earlier today (and as you can see in those photos), Atlanta is also losing the piping on their belt loops.
(To see other Uni Watch exclusives based on the 2024 MLB Style Guide, look here.)
I may be in the minority here, but ai think this is a marked improvement.
(1) Is the red also brighter/more saturated? Or is that just two different cameras (and/or maybe a spillover effect from red piping instead of white)?
(2) May I ask, is there a reason to continue getting the confirmations from your source piecemeal instead of getting the guide leaked in one fell swoop?
more content = more clicks = more ad rev
Actually, Jem, the reason is that my source doesn’t want to give me the entire Style Guide all at once. And since they’re doing me a favor, I’m going along with their terms.
Paul’s not using the style guide as the story, though. Paul is getting stories from other sources and using the style guide to corroborate. Getting the entire thing at once would be a ton of work for Paul to go through, and unless he had last year’s style guide to compare it to, might result in some changes being overlooked anyway. Paul’s more detailed than I am, but I’m not sure, if I were browsing through a style guide, that a headspoon piping color change would stick out to me enough to catch my attention.
And even so, the style guide as a story is just a watered-down version of the season preview, which Paul already does with much greater detail.
Not a fan of the blue alt (or almost any alt, for that matter), but I definitely count this as an upgrade.
I’m trying to tell if the new blue jersey looks brighter and slightly lighter than last year’s navy jersey. Of all the Braves jerseys, the navy is my least favorite. I miss the simple cream jerseys, and hate that the trim on the pants is going away.
I wonder why their sleeve trim remained in the same spot since other teams had theirs moved to the edge of the sleeve.
I believe that’s only for teams with multi-color “braid” striping, not single-color piping (aka soutache)
If you look closely, the stripe has been moved to the elastic cuff. They’ve just added navy to the lower end of the cuff to maintain the look.
Just zoomed in and I think you’re correct. But the effect is still the same. Teams with multi-color braids now have them all moved to the bottom of the hem/cuff; solid colors (even if there is an additional piece of braid added in the same color as the jersey) have the appearance of not terminating at the cuff, so it will look like there is a gap as there was in the past.
Hope that makes sense.
I think the surprise changes are fun, and I think that this one Atlanta change is good (both aesthetically and practically since gray piping should go with white pants), but holy cow they’re taking a step backwards with the lost pants piping. I choose to blame Nike, taking all the shortcuts and removing the nice special touches. Good on the Cardinals owner for caring about chain stitching more than Atlanta evidently cared about their piping
Holy Minnesota
This change means that it makes even less sense to wear the all navy road cap with this jersey. It just looks out of place with there being so much red on the jersey and none on the hat. Same for the road greys.
Thank you!! Seems like I never see anyone bring that up and it bothers me to no end.
Always hated the all navy hat
I’ll miss the piping on the belt loops. The jersey is fine.
Does it look good? Yes.
Does it make me think ‘Twins’ and not ‘Atlanta’? Also yes.
Obviously meant ‘Twins’ and not ‘Tiwns’
Definitely like the red trim. Think it will look great on the field. A friend of mine and I recently were talking about the Cubs adding red headspoon piping and sleeve stripes to their blue alternate. Phil was nice enough to find someone to do a mock up. Looked really good!
Makes them look like the Twins
Definitely like the pre-2023 Twins (link)
But they got new blue alts last year that removed the headspoon and added a red/white/blue braid (link)
So, the 2024 Atlanta club does resemble the pre-2023 Twins, but not really anymore.
The red piping is an improvement! It does look nicer than the white piping in this case.
Doesn’t make up for the loss of belt loop piping, though… nor does it make up for the GIANT FREAKING SACK OF CONCRETE ad patch! (Yep, as long as that ugly ad patch is unchanged, I’m still going to yell about it every time it comes up! Seriously, just use the wordmark logo! It’d still be obnoxious, but less so than the current patch!)
Nike must have felt the white headspoon was taking attention away from the swoosh.
It’s probably said already – but man, moving down that MLB logo is a minus across the board. Feels like a manufacturing defect.
It’s absolutely awful. It doesn’t need to be there at all, but at least when it was inside the collar, it didn’t shove the other elements further downward like it does now.
I don’t usually find myself this much in the minority, but I think the gray head spoon looks tons better.
Now if only they’d change the hats to match. It’s always irked me that they have a single colored “A” on their hats but outlined script on their jerseys. The A’s road uniform does the same thing and it bugs me lol.
I bet replacing the grey trim with red is so they can also wear it at home with white pants
I don’t buy that these changes are all Nike’s doing. Template’ing is always a cost-cutting measure (at least in part). Fanatics produces the uniforms. I’m sure they both played a role.
All I see is the Minn. Twins when I see the back of the Jersey with the red piping. Makes me feel good that the Twins are still in their head, 1991 baby!
Kent Hrbek totally yanked Ron Gant off the bag!!
I might have missed it. Has the Quickrete ad patch been brought up yet?
Never mind. Found it.
These ads are working really well on me. They had them all last season and I didn’t realize it? I’ve somehow developed the ability to immediately purge them from my mind when I don’t want to see that shit.
I like it. The white made the white outline pop where as this really brings out the red from the logo
Piping on the belt loops is sorely missed by me.
Braves are The Patriots of MLB when it comes to uniforms. They are just there. Not great, not terrible