PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — Spring Training is officially underway, as the Tampa Bay Rays have began exhibition play in Port Charlotte. They will play 31 games in the Grapefruit League, with 14 of them at home.

What You Need To Know

Spring Training is underway for the Tampa Bay Rays

Five Rays major league players will soon leave to represent their countries at the World Baseball Classic

Junior Caminero will play for the Dominican Republic, and Jonathan Aranda will represent Team Mexico

They both said they are using these initial Spring Training games to get ready for the WBC

The Rays’ first game of the spring was last Saturday, with a packed crowd at Charlotte Sports Park to watch them take on the Braves. Rays manager Kevin Cash said it felt great to play in front of fans again.

“Really good. You do this for two weeks, and you’re in the backfields, it’s always nice, I think, players appreciate playing in front of fans and gives that much more motivation to go out there and perform,” Cash said.

“Oh yeah it’s good, amazing, we laugh while I’m hitting and we said, ‘Wow there’s fans when we go out,’ We’re excited, we come back to spring,” Rays third baseman Junior Caminero said.

For Caminero and first baseman Jonathan Aranda, these first few games are acting as a warmup to the World Baseball Classic. Caminero went 2 for 3 with 2 singles in the opener and is getting ready to play for the Dominican Republic. Aranda got a single in the opener as well as he gears up to represent Mexico.

“Oh yeah it’s close, a week, so I can’t wait. So it’s very close, I tried my mentality to say ‘good day, compete,’ ‘good day, have fun, compete’ and just couple games more then go to the WBC,” Caminero said.

“Obviously we gotta do our parts, play the game, but last time around we did a really good job. So now it’s a brand new tournament, it’s a short tournament, but we gotta do our job again, and hopefully we put ourselves in another good position to raise the trophy,” Rays interpretor Kevin Vera said for Aranda.

Rays pitchers Garrett Cleavinger and Griffin Jax will play for the United States, and Yoendrys Gomez is playing for Venezuela, so five Rays major leaguers will leave next week and the rest will stay in Florida for more Grapefruit League action.