I knew about the new road uniform changes for the Giants months ago but I didn’t really have a strong opinion on them until I actually saw them in action this weekend.

So the Giants now have two different road gray jerseys — the first team to do that since the 2008 Rangers (photos here, here) and one of them looks really good. The other one looks like a big mess.

There are subtle changes to the primary but they are not improvements to the set. In fact, they’ve made it look a lot worse.

Let’s take a look at both the jerseys and see what’s new.

PRIMARY

The image on the left is their old primary road uniform and the one on the right is the new one for this season. The first thing you’ll notice is the headspoon piping that goes down the jersey. I don’t understand why they would do that. Most road jerseys are normally mirror images of the home jerseys. But by adding the headspoon, the team has now eliminated the black and orange collar and have moved up their sleeve piping a couple inches.

Compared to their home whites, the new road jerseys look nothing like it. They don’t have the same design with the piping, the collar or the sleeves. And what makes it worse is that the headspoon doesn’t work very well with the script. It might look better if the piping matched the sleeves like other teams (example here, here and here).

It may just be me, but the piping looks like it’s singling out the “A” in Francisco. It just seems so unbalanced. Now maybe if the script wasn’t so plain, they would be able to pull it off like the Mariners or Braves. (And also note that these road jerseys are near mirror reflections of the team’s home jerseys).

If the Giants were serious about making their road jersey so ridiculous, at least use this script and eliminate the collar from the home whites. The best solution was to do absolutely nothing.

ALTERNATE

Now this is something I like. Whenever a team decides to wear an alternate throwback as part of their set, for the most part, it looks good.

The Giants have done just that to honor their team from the 80s with this fantastic look. The logo on the chest fits well with the headspoon. It’s simple and classic. And also, it reads nicely with the left arm sleeve patch, making it read “SF Giants“.

The sleeve piping is still moved up like the primaries and the Giants will need to figure out if they want to change their home jerseys to fit into it.

This, compared to the primary, is a complete opposite. The alternate is visually pleasing and it doesn’t look cluttered. It’s an homage to the past but still has the classic Giants modern feel. And I am told that the alternate jersey will be a Sunday only thing like the alternate cap, which is nice.

My suggestion is that the team should make this their primary road jersey and scrap the other one. They should remove the collar from the home jersey and fix the piping on the sleeve to give themselves probably one of the best sets in all of baseball.

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Since I am not a Giants fan, this will probably be the only time I’ll actually talk about this team unless they face the A’s (my favorite team), make another uniform change, or stir up controversy like last year’s Buster Posey injury.