EXCLUSIVE: The Inside Story Behind the Mismatched Grey Fabric on MLB’s New Uniforms

An employee at MLB’s uniform factory tells us what’s going on behind the scenes.

Last week I wrote about how several MLB teams’ new road uniforms appear to have different shades of grey for the jerseys and pants. Most teams aren’t wearing grey jerseys in spring training, so for now we’ve only seen this phenomenon for three teams — the Cardinals, Phillies, and D-backs — but the problem may become more widespread once the regular season starts and everyone begins wearing their primary road greys. If you missed my report on this, look here to get up to speed.

Over the weekend, I was contacted via email by an employee from the Pennsylvania factory that produces MLB’s on-field uniforms. This facility was once owned by Majestic and is now run by Fanatics, but it’s the same facility with the same staff. They made all of MLB’s uniforms during the Majestic era, and they’ve also made all the on-field unis during the Nike era (although up until this year the uniforms were made to the old Majestic specs).

In the days since the employee first contacted me, we’ve continued to communicate — first via a series of emails and eventually on the phone. Today I’m going to share the discussions we’ve had.

Before we go further: You’ll see that my source refers several times to "dye lots." Just to clarify, a dye lot is a particular batch of yarn or fabric that was colored with the same dye in the same vat at the same time. In a perfect world, grey jerseys and grey pants would be made from the same dye lot (same for red jerseys and red pants, or any other color). But even when that isn’t possible, quality control procedures should be in place to ensure that same-colored fabric from different dye lots still matches up.

With that in mind, here’s the first communiqué I received from this source (I’ve done some very light editing for grammar and spelling):

I work for the Majestic/Fanatics facility that produces the uniforms. I’d like my name to be kept out of any articles, please.