The Houston Astros became the second team this season to debut their City Connect 2.0 uniforms, joining the Washington Nationals, who debuted their next gen CC’s this past weekend.
As with most unveilings, I like to hold off judgment on a uniform until we “see it on the field and in action.” I try to judge the uniform strictly as a uniform, and whether the little design storytelling elements attached to each CC make for good (or bad) uniform. My initial thoughts on this uniform were positive, but now that we’ve seen them on the diamond, how did they look?
I actually watched a good chunk of this game, and my first impression was that I was just watching another baseball game between a white-clad home team and a gray-wearing road team. Nothing about the Astros new “STROS” City Connect uniform jumped out at me (and that’s a good thing). For the most part, if I were just a casual observer, I might notice the team had new uniforms, but nothing about them gave away that this was a special CC. Again, that’s a good thing.
Here’s some video.
Houston native Jordan Hicks pitched in 29 @MLB stadiums before making his Daikin Park debut tonight.
Hicks invited 90 friends and family members to see his start against the Astros, and he turned in a squeaky clean outing in their presence 🫧 pic.twitter.com/f995ToqDkz
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) April 1, 2025
As far as the uniforms go, I rather like the new CC (and especially in comparison to the monoblue Space City CC). I liked the new CC cap, and even though the jersey reads “STROS,” the wordmark is actually fine overall. It’s actually more evocative of the Astros original uniform, with its shooting star wordmark.
And while I’m not big on the sublimated pattern on the sleeve and pants stripes, from any distance the stripes appeared fairly solid. There’s also a very good balance between the navy/blue and orange on the uniform.
One thing that I didn’t notice during the unveiling — the pants have color contrasting pocket openings (a nice old-school touch). The NOB in big orange letters was easy to read, and the rear numbers (which actually have a yellow/orange/red block shadow) mostly appeared as solid blue.
During the unveiling, I noted the Astros have created a special sleeve patch for the CC — I liked it then and I like it even more having seen it on the sleeve.
And while uniform ads are a bane to the uni-watching experience, the Astros lucked out a bit with theirs. By dint of their advertisers’ colors, even the ad seemed to blend in.
The way the Astros handled the new cap design on the helmets was interesting. Straight on, the lids look very much like the cap.
But at a closer glance, the front white panel on the helmets was treated more like the Padres caps of yore, with more of a bell shape to the white section.
In that regard, the Astros helmets got the same design treatment as the Braves (but the Braves’ helmet treatment more closely matches their CC caps).
Most of the Astros wore their pants pajama-style, but a few players — like Jose Altuve — went high cuffed, showing off the orange/gold CC socks. The hosiery looks really good at a distance, but up close, the “STROS” wordmark on the socks was disappointing. They’d look much better without it.
Unfortunately for the Astros, they dropped their CC debut to the SF Giants. As such, the team only put up one video on social media (their lone two-run scoring hit), but it gives a decent look at the CCs in action.
Isaac off the wall!#TheNextFrontier pic.twitter.com/oxXINXHz2o
— Houston Astros (@astros) April 1, 2025
Overall? As with all CC’s, it’s completely unnecessary, but judging it solely as a baseball uniform, then it passed the “good” eye test. Let’s hope most (or all) the remaining CC 2.0 releases are as good as this one.
Watching the local Pregame show, one of the CC 2.0 people (Anita Sehgal – VP of Marketing & Communications) said they went light because so many of CC unis in 2024 were dark and they felt they were all starting to look similar. They knew the pops of orange and blue would really stand out against the clean white. 2.0 is intended to be the evolution of the Moon to Mars. They wanted to celebrate the past but do it in a modern way. STROS was put on the jerseys specifically for the fans. The Space City CC uniforms were the best ever in MLB and Nike City Connect – so they wanted to pay tribute to that with the “Space City” inside the neck. There will be a whole City Connect weekend the first weekend in April.
We also had CC 2.0 related on-screen graphics on Space City Network including score bug, and highlight transitions.
So how did it look on the field? THEY ARE SO WHITE… but U.S. spacesuits are very white too – so I guess that is on brand.
The moon print sleeve trim shows up nice on tv, especially during pitcher and batter closeups. And I think it actually does add interest on the rather plain uniform. The sleeve trim looks really good from the back – it envokes old school to me (the collar on the tequila sunrise had strong orange and blue trim together).
The single fairly bright blue pant stripe is annoying. But that is actually also, sadly, on brand for Houston. And the pocket does not match the pant stripe – there is no moon print. I have always liked the Negro League dark pocket flaps although this doesn’t have the same feel at all. I don’t hate them and I do like how the blue pocket breaks up the white. I think the pockets still add a nice touch.
The batting helmets and caps are just really bright blue – and that feels off to me. The batting helmet is especially way too blue. The orange star on the cap needs to be a darker orange (like the batting helmet) and it would be more successful. It gets washed out by the fat blue A font that matches absolutely nothing. It is indeed the weakest link – and that is a shame based on the history of that mark. One thing I noticed was that when you look at the cap from under, it looks more blue and gold and I wonder if that was on purpose. Until I see one in person, I won’t know.
As for the accessories, the orange belt looks good, socks are okay. But I like the navy undershirt sleeves better – they bring down some of the brightness of the cap and the orange sleeves are just too much.
And yes, “STROS” on the front of the jersey is growing on me. But really, I am just nit-picking. These look great.
Fun trivia with the train refresh (no longer oranges) for those of you not following – 25 baseballs with different logos celebrating the 25 years in this ballpark.
OK readers — now it’s your say. What’s your verdict on the new City Connects for the “STROS”?
“STROS” is really my only complaint; these are nice.
seconded. just an A away.
That’s my beef, too. It seems odd to mess with a team’s name.
For every ten misses Nike has one hit. This is one of those times love these.
I’m not bothered by “Stros”. My only complaint is that the socks are far too yellow, especially from a distance. More orange (or no gradient at all) would be better. And that’s coming from someone who is almost as averse to orange as Paul is to purple.
I’m not sure who that pitcher is – Gusto? – but his shoes look absolutely amazing with the full uniform, and I think it would actually look worse if he wore his socks high.
I guess the missing A on the uniforms is just on the hat, so if you blur your eyes like for a 3D pic, you can make out ASTROS.
Long-time Astros fan here. Love the uniforms as a whole. “STROS” is fine, “ASTROS” would have been better, but it’s OK as is. Love the white-panel caps, love the logo on the cap, love the orange squatchee. Like the name font being a different color than the number font, though the standard block name font doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the uniform. Love the helmet design reminiscent of the old Padres and Twins, but it is more of a royal blue than a navy, which bugs me slightly. Hate the matte helmet finish. Just hate matte helmets, baseball and football, period. Love everything else, including the sleeve patch.
Overall, I love them, but (and I’m in the minority on this), I don’t love them as much as the Space City uniforms. I liked the all-navy, liked the numbers on the pants for its homage to the pants from the original rainbow guts uniforms, and loved the gradient numbers and player name fonts (and I usually hate gradients). But if the Astros ditched the current home uniforms for the CC 2.0 uniforms tonight on a permanent basis, I’d be pretty happy.
Update the wordmark to read ASTROS and use the previous City Connect hat and I think this could be elevated to a full-time look. Really strong uniform regardless.
Agree with others, this would not only be a good CC uniform, but also a good standard uniform were it not for the missing A. The only other issue I really take with this uniform is the A rather than H on the cap, I’m the sort that thinks the cap should always reference the location rather than nickname (Athletics being the except due to long standing tradition).
I watched much of this game, and it took me a while to figure out why these uniforms looked so “off” to me: the blue uniform stripes don’t match the blue of the caps/undershirts/back pockets, and the orange socks don’t match the belts and NOBs. Those may seem like nits to pick, but these uniforms would really hold together better if they, you know, unified these things. I give them a B- (the minus is for STROS, which is dumb).
I think it’s fine as a uniform but it kind of sucks as a CC because it looks so basic. The point of the CC uniforms is to stand out and connect to the city (and generate merch sales obvs but not really on topic here) and the first thing that jumps out is that the A on the hat made me think I was looking at an Arizona hat. Only seeing the outline of the star in there made it clear that this was Houston. Personally preferred the Space City CCs to these.
I support a CC that actually looks like it belongs to the team that’s wearing it.
I hate the hat logo. The split A bothers me.
To echo many folks, other than missing the A these are really good and look better than their regulars. The Astros are futuristic themed team and I like when their sets focusing on that.
The missing A on the jersey is correct as is. People here in Houston have referred to them as the Stros for as long as I can remember, so it connects with the city just right.
Needs an apostrophe, then.
I like these better than I thought I would based on the earlier pics. The blue back-pocket openings rock!
Also, bonus points for using the great phrase “by dint of.”
They’d look a lot better if they didn’t utilize tons of design “gimmicks” and trends. Remove the gradients, remove the sublimated printing, and wear some normal socks. Boom. Now you have an actual jersey and not a minor league-esque look.
Someone please put a stop to Stance and their gimmicks. A nice simple pair of socks would go a long way toward helping this design look less cluttered and busy. Partly my beef with it is (and this has been with most CCs) so many elements have to be SOMETHING. The socks have to be wild and crazy. The trim has to have a sublimated pattern or a gradient. Just tone it TF down a little. My remaining beef with this uni is the same I have with the (alleged) giants uni, the dodgers uni, and some others: nitpicking aside, in a vacuum, this is a perfectly good uni, just not great, but ultimately it doesn’t add to or match up to what they wear as their primary wardrobe (and in both the giants and astros cases, it’s a downgrade from the previous CC). By simply being a “decent” uni that is far afield of what they wear and has plenty of nits to pick, it makes itself irrelevant. If Nike had gone all in and polished and edited this design until it maximized its potential, this could be the basis of a pretty solid redesign for the stros. But as an unpolished addition to the primary wardrobe it calls attention to its issues and its irrelevance. The hat should sell gangbusters, though. The graphic design on this one is pretty great, and very astros.
They look like the Astros, Braves and Diamondbacks made a weird baby.
Too many mismatches of blue hues, the A on the hat is not pleasing to my eye and I am not into Stros (but then again, I am not from Houston). And yet this is not a bad uniform. I like the moon print, I like the shooting star, I like the sleeve patch. But still: a lot to be repaired to make it a great uniform to me.
My thoughts exactly. I think I counted 4 different blues.