Phillies will wear their red jerseys on the road and hope it goes better than the last time they tried it

The Phillies were nose-diving in the summer of 1992 when the players decided to wear their red jerseys in San Diego. But a new look didn’t help as they lost for the 14th time in 16 games a day before finishing a 13-game road trip with just two wins.

The Inquirer’s headline said the bright-red jerseys made the Phillies look like a softball team and “they played like one.”

“Yeah, we wore them but it didn’t help,” first baseman John Kruk said after the game. “So I think we’re going to try mixing. Half the guys are going to wear red. Half the guys will wear gray. And the guys who don’t look good with shirts on are going to go naked. We’ll try anything right now.”

Twenty-nine years later, the Phillies will try it again. On Wednesday, the Phillies will wear their red jerseys — which were introduced five years ago as an alternate home jersey — at Dodger Stadium as a way to break the monotony.

They are nine games above .500 at home this season and nine games below .500 on the road. So perhaps they can bring a slice of home with them when they’re away from South Philadelphia.

“I think wearing gray all the time is just boring,” Bryce Harper said. “I mean, really. Being able to kind of put something else out there that’s a little bit different. We’re definitely not going to do it at home at all. It’ll just be a road jersey for sure.”

“We’ve been talking about it as a team. We kind of took it up the ladder and talked to people about it and they said, ‘Hey, let’s give it a try.’ ”

The Phils will wear the red jerseys again on Sunday in San Francisco and will wear them sporadically on the road throughout the season. The red tops were worn for weekday home matinee games in 2016 and 2017 before being removed from the regular-season rotation in 2018 when the Phillies brought back their powder-blue throwback uniforms. The red jerseys have since been relegated to spring training.

“I think just being able to have another set of unis on the road … a lot of teams do it,” Harper said. “They go on the road, they wear their blues or they wear their black or whatever they have. I know as a team we thought we wanted to do something different. The red jersey is definitely a fit.”

Jean Segura leads National League second baseman in batting average, has the fourth-highest on-base percentage, and has accumulated the fifth-most WAR. But that has earned him little favor at the ballot box.

Segura is in sixth place among National League second basemen and trailed first-place Ozzie Albies of Atlanta on Monday by 149,157 votes. The top three vote-getters at each position advance on June 27 to the second phase of voting. Segura trails third place by 21,102 votes.

“If I can make a plug: This is an All-Star. We need to vote this guy in,” Phillies manager Joe Girardi said. “We have a lot of Phillies fans wherever we go. I don’t do this very often but, to me, he deserves to go to the All-Star Game. And I hope he gets voted in.

“He’s been our best hitter, day in and day out.”

The Phillies plan to resume Didi Gregorius’ rehab schedule on Tuesday night in Allentown after his elbow flared up over the weekend. Girardi said Gregorius, who has been out since May 12 with inflammation in his right elbow, felt good on Monday.

“He just got a little stiff and had a little swelling. We’re not surprised. He has to work through this,” Girardi said.

Gregorius played two games with triple-A Lehigh Valley before the team paused his rehab schedule when he felt discomfort.

“There’s certain swings that he feels it on,” Girardi said. “I asked him if it was a swing-and-miss and he said no. A lot of times, that’s where they feel it, but it wasn’t. He just felt it one time, a little bit, and the next day it was a little stiff, so we shut him down to try and get that stiffness out.”

Brandon Kintzler’s sore neck is improving, Girardi said, but the reliever is not yet throwing bullpen sessions. … Left-hander Matt Moore (sore back) remains in triple A on a rehab assignment. He has made four starts with Lehigh Valley. … Right-hander Chase Anderson is still on the COVID-19 injured list.