Skip to content
 

Washington Nationals (Re)Introduce Alternate Red Jersey for 2025

The New York Mets weren’t the only team unveiling a new alternate jersey over the weekend.

In a very low-key move, the Washington Nationals have unveiled a new red jersey for the 2025 season. It’s similar to the red jersey the team has worn previously.

Here’s a look at the new jersey (unfortunately there are no rear views):

At first glance, this very closely resembles the previously worn red alternate. However, there are a few differences.

As you can see, the biggest difference between the old and new alternate is the removal of the placket piping (headspoon) on the new jersey. The white/blue sleeve piping also appears a bit thicker.

The other major difference — or at least apparent difference — is the removal of the jersey number from the front of the jersey. One word of caution, however. Although the Mets’ jersey leak didn’t have numbers, the final version has them. Whether the front number will appear on Washington’s on-field authentic versions remains to be seen. In all honesty, I would be pleased if the team does remove the front number, as the old design always felt unbalanced, with the Curly W logo on the upper left chest, but the jersey number on the lower right.

With the introduction of the red jersey to the uniform lineup, the Nats will need to drop one of their current jerseys in order to fit into MLB’s “4 + 1” (core four jerseys + City Connect). In 2024, the Nats introduced a new alternate white pullover and road gray jersey, and in addition the team also wore their home white primary, navy blue alternate, and CC.

The 2024 uniform lineup:

Home White
Road Gray
While Pullover Alternate
Navy Alternate
City Connect

Since the Nats are already at their “Core Four” maximum, one of the remaining jerseys will need to be excised in order to accommodate the new red alternate. Since the Nats only last year unveiled two new jerseys (gray road and alt. white pullover), one would expect them to remain in the rotation, as well as their white primary home uniform. However, rather than ditch the navy alternate, the Nationals will apparently be retiring the white pullover after only one season (that jersey was worn sparingly last season). The blue alt, on the other hand, was worn more than 30 times.

As you may be aware, the Nationals late last season announced they are also jettisoning their current (and very popular) City Connect uniform, and will be replacing it with a new CC for 2025. Although I never liked the giant “airport code” on their CCs, I always thought it was a pretty good uniform otherwise.

While I prefer the red alternate to the navy alternate, I’m not sure that the “new” red alternate is an improvement over the old red one. For jerseys that have logos (as opposed to scripts or wordmarks), I always preferred to have a headspoon, since they’re generally pretty plain-looking otherwise. And if they do indeed remove the front number, this will make the jersey plainer still. As I explained above, I wouldn’t mind if they remove the front number due to its location, but maybe the number could be moved to be on the same plane as the Curly W, similar to how the Cincinnati Reds place their number and logo. But honestly, I think the jersey will look better with no front number at all.

UPDATE: The jersey will have no front number. This also shows the back of the uniform, and cap.

Readers? What say you?

 
  
 
Comments (30)

    Looks much better and cleaner. A big improvement. The old headspoon is tacky looking. They still need to fix the gray road jersey it’s too bland.

    Came here to say something similar. The grey road jersey was fine with the Washington script. That change was one of the most baffling I’ve ever seen. The new road grey is simply awful.

    Love when a team does a logo on one side of the uniform. Takes away the chance of the name being butchered by the buttons.

    Uniform is okay enough. I really liked their pullover, minus the awful collar design. Hope we keep getting more and more pullovers with a vneck collar.

    One commenter on sportslogos.net claiming to have insider knowledge on the Nats’ uniform process says that this is part of a move back towards the curly W, which they initially were trying to phase out (hence the new road greys and the capitol W) but pivoted back after there was backlash. He says that the script road greys will likely be back in a few years. Idk whether to believe this, but it sounds plausible.

    Bring back the white unis with the W, ditch the Nationals script, bring back the script Washington greys now

    Change the road grey back to what it was, and get rid of the regular W with the Capitol Dome logo on the hats. Just go all Walgreens logo hat across uniforms. Than the Nats will have a 100% good set.

    The Nats have went from having a solid good looking set, to an absolute mess. The new blue cap with white panel looks terrible on field. That white pullover looked like a beer league softball team. Just bad.

    The good news, if this is to be believed, is the white-panel hat and the pullover are gone now, as they were often paired together. (I didn’t mind the pullover, but I wish they’d wear it with their standard blue/red cap. The blue on the white-panel hat didn’t match the blue on the pullover at all.)

    I wish they’d keep the pullover, ditch the white-panel hat and ditch the road greys altogether.

    Liked the previous red jersey with the head spoon. Regardless, this will be a major improvement if the softball league pullover is replaced.

    All teams should run quickly away from the unbalanced “Logo in the upper left chest, number in lower right” look. IMHO the number should be in the upper right chest, parallel to the upper left chest logo.

    And yes, the Rangers CC annoys me, but I’ll give it a pass.

    I actually tend to feel like the diagonal is MORE balanced (imagine if you were literally balancing something on a square plane). But I think having the parallel looks sharp too. Wish they would have brought the numbers back.

    I miss the navy/white headspoon but overwise, fine. Now, bring back the script Washington roadies and solid navy cap.

    Massive downgrade. I just feel like nike tries to continue to remove details to spend less making the jerseys. I realize they don’t make all the decisions… but it happens to often to convince me otherwise. It is all about the $ for them.

    I’m glad the Nats are nixing their white pullover alternate. Which means the Mets are now one of only two teams that has a pullover in their rotation!

    They should bring back the previous road jersey used from 2011-2023. That with the red cap on the road would look awesome.

    Although I never liked the giant “airport code” on their CCs, I always thought it was a pretty good uniform otherwise.

    I don’t wanna be that guy, but there’s no “WAS” airport code in the DC Metro area. There’s DCA (National), IAD (Dulles) and BWI (Balt-Wash) but no WAS.

    Not unhappy for them to retire the white pullover. It wasn’t a hard decision for them to ditch it for this red one. With regards to the CC, no fan of the cherry blossom but it was a true connect with WAS.

    Actually, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the body that governs standards for commercial aviation, does use “WAS” as a catch-all code for all major commercial airports in the Washington area including National, Dulles, and BWI. If you type “WAS” into many flight booking engines, you’ll get results for all 3 airports.

    That said, the Nats used “WSH” on their CCs, which is actually the IATA code for Brookhaven airport on Long Island.

    The shock here is that the Nats made a uniform change that somehow didn’t make them look uglier. That hasn’t happened since 2011.

    Not surprising is that the changes to the red alt lack connection with the home whites and red grays, so it preserves the general sense of muddled lack of identity. The team needs a top-to-bottom uniform redo.

    A close examination shows that there is one major change unmentioned in the main article text: The Nats have finally ditched the old 2005 curly W for the much cleaner 2011 curly W on the jersey chest. The old red alt used the pre-2011 original, which recreated several rendering flaws from MLB’s old circa 1970 files.

    Now if only the Nats would replace the 2005 curly W on their hats with their current actual logo.

    Too bad, the headspoon looked great. Also too bad that they’re dropping those great looking white pullovers.

    I don’t suppose it will ever come back, but I miss the beveled numbers that they used during the first years in Washington. They looked particularly good with the NNOB practice jerseys that they wore then; the lack of a name made it possible to have the three layers and the gold bevels without it looking too busy.

    Losing the hideous while pullover was a major step in making the Nationals uniforms great again.

    Thoroughly meh but getting rid of the white pullover might be addition by subtraction. This isn’t great or anything. Just meh.

Comments are closed.