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When will the Phillies get ‘City Connect’ uniforms?

Ready or not, the Philadelphia Phillies “City Connect” uniforms are coming.

According to MLB.com‘s Todd Zolecki, the Phillies will be getting City Connect uniforms for the 2024 season. Zolecki adds that “they could be revealed sometime this year,” although it’s unclear if that refers to the 2023 season or this calendar year.

Started in 2021, 14 MLB teams currently have City Connect uniforms, with the plan being that the remaining 16 will be outfitted over the course of the next two seasons. Of the 14 teams with City Connect uniforms so far, the Miami Marlins and Colorado Rockies have received rave reviews, while classic franchises such as the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs have been panned for their new alternate looks.

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Each City Connect uniform has a theme, such as the Rockies’ being based on, among other things, the Colorado license plate. It’s not yet clear what the concept will be behind the Phillies’ City Connect uniforms.

Bad Luck

Earlier this month, we wrote about Nike’s “four-plus-one” rule and what it could mean for the future of the Phillies’ current uniform rotation. The plus one is going to be the City Connect uniform, and we wondered whether that would mean that the “getaway day” red tops are phased out.

However, we hadn’t considered that this rule may also apply to Spring Training, but apparently it does.

According to Zolecki, the Phillies won’t wear their popular green St. Patrick’s Day tops in 2023 because of this rule when they have split-squad exhibitions against the Toronto Blue Jays on March 17.

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What’s more, when we wondered whether the red uniform tops would eventually no longer be part of the uniform rotation, our thought was just during the regular season. But perhaps Nike’s reluctance to produce more than five uniforms per team could also mean that the Phillies need to pick one of their regular season uniforms to also double as their Spring Training uniforms.

Perhaps that’s an argument for finding a way to keep the red jerseys around, but the four other in the rotation are all older and generally more popular:

Red pinstripes have been worn as the primary home uniform since 1992 and aren’t going anywhere.
The team’s current primary road uniforms are gray, which look significantly better with long red sleeves underneath than they do in the summer. The Seattle Mariners are actually ditching gray on the road entirely as part of this rule, but they have navy blue tops that are pretty popular and will now be their primary road uniforms. The Phillies don’t seem to have another uniform that they could use full-time on the road.

In 2008, the Phillies introduced their cream alternates, which are worn for the majority of day games at Citizens Bank Park. They were inspired by the primary home uniforms that the Phillies wore from 1946-1949.
In 2018, the Phillies started wearing their powder blue throwbacks for all games played at Citizens Bank Park on Thursdays. Of course, the powder blues were initially road uniforms, worn by the Phillies on a full-time basis from 1972-1988. Perhaps if the reds are eliminated, the powder blues can be worn as an alternate both at home and on the road.