The San Diego Padres are the league’s most recent team to get their Nike City Connect jerseys. The release didn’t go as planned. Before being officially released, several photos of the jerseys leaked on social media.
The Padres’ City Connect jerseys are the latest in a series of jerseys that the MLB has been slowly releasing all year. Just last week, the Milwaukee Brewers recieved their City Connects, which received mixed reviews from fans. Before them, the Los Angeles Angels leaked theirs early as well.
The idea behind the City Connect jerseys is to shake up uniform styles around the league while highlighting the defining characteristics of each team’s city. The MLB announced its City Connect partnership with Nike in 2021.
Only four promotional pictures of the Padres’ new jerseys leaked. They included detailed shots of the name patches on the back of the jerseys, along with closeups of the team’s alternate logo patch on the sleeve. But the socks were the star of the show. They contained five colors in total.
Considering that the jerseys are so far from the San Diego Padres’ original colors, fans had mostly negative reactions. One fan compared the bright pastel colors to those featured in popular Barbie movies.
The colors seem to match Florida’s style more than California’s. The bright pink and teal colors seem appropriate in one sense considering San Diego’s beach culture. On the other hand, they look like they belong in a Floridian city like Miami or Orlando.
The new jerseys stray very far from the Padres primary brown and yellow colors.
While some fans liked the socks, reviews were rather negative across the board.