The Fayetteville Woodpeckers, a Minor League Baseball team who play the Carolina League, are the Single-A affiliate of the Houston Astros. They are located in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
The Woodpeckers are a fairly “young” club, being born in 2017. From 2017 to 2018, the team was known as the Buies Creek Astros, taking their name from the location of their stadium (they originally played at Jim Perry Stadium on the campus of Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina). In 2019, the team moved to their current home.
Like many MiLB teams, the team got its name via a name-the-team contest. There were more than 1,400 suggestions, with the final five being “Fatbacks,” “Fly Traps,” “Jumpers,” “Wood Dogs,” and “Woodpeckers.” Per Wiki, the chosen name, Woodpeckers, “was selected in honor of the red-cockaded woodpecker which was once plentiful in Fayetteville but is now an endangered species.” The team’s colors are black, gray, and red.
Like the Fort Wayne TinCaps, the team revealed a new road jersey, but not a full gray uniform. The team also unveiled a new cap for 2025, and the cap will be worn with both home and road uniforms.
The new cap features a black crown, with a red brim.
The cap has a red squatchee and eyelets. The “F” logo is rendered to appear as if a woodpecker has broken a few holes in it, as that species does when searching for dinner.
The new road jersey is fairly plain. It boasts “FAYETTEVILLE” across the chest, in red lettering with a white block shadow, all outlined in black.
Thin black placket piping creates a headspoon, and this thin piping is also found near the sleeve hems. On the right side of the jersey is the North Carolina flag.
The team’s former road jersey appears to be a bit darker gray, with “Fayetteville” written in black script with a red outline. Jersey numbers are also black outlined in red.
While I’m not in love with the new road jersey, I love the new cap. Fayetteville is a rather long word, so it’s difficult to put on a jersey and not appear scrunched. I think the block font works better than the script, but neither is particularly great.
Of course, one way around a long name for the team’s location would be to simply put the team’s nickname across the chest. Unfortunately, “Woodpeckers” clocks in with 11 letters, only one less than “Fayetteville.”
The team wears the full name on their white jerseys, and the new road jersey will more closely align with the typeface and style used on the home tops:
Here’s a look at the logo on the batting helmets shown above. As far as logos go, I think it’s one of the better MiLB ones.
Over their short lifetime as the Woodpeckers, the team have introduced a few alternate looks. And being an Astros affiliate, of course one of those is an ode to the infamous tequila sunrise/rainbow guts jersey sported by their parent club in the 1970s-80s.
Even their cap was a tribute to the original Astros cap (which was actually never worn).
Back to shortening the team name for a second — they’ve never worn a shortened nickname on the field, but there have been a few fan jerseys where the “Wood” portion of the name has been removed.
Normally, I would not post fan merch — but there is at least one Uni Watcher who owns the rainbow guts version seen above. The one and only James Huening (who if he reads this can give you the background of his jersey), and Jimbo wore that shirt when we took in a Mets game this past September:
The Woodpeckers’ will break out the new road tops in their first road game in 2025, which will take place April 8 against the Delmarva Shorebirds.
Your thoughts?
Love that hat and improve the Fayetteville wordmark by adding the same holes and broken off pieces as with the excellent hat logo. Or use Peckers again.
Loving the MiLB coverage.
This is a tricky one because both “Fayetteville” and “Woodpeckers” are kind of long for front jersey scripts. They have to shrink so much to fit that it makes the headspoon look too big by comparison. That plain 1918 jersey is my favorite, by far.
The holes-in-F is a cool touch. Like the poster above mentioned, it would be cool to see that a little more in the wordmark, but if they went overboard it might look like swiss cheese or bullet holes.
I think this team could do a better version of the bird logo. Woodpeckers look pretty cool IRL, especially those big pileated or legendary ivory-billed guys.