Morning everyone and happy Wednesday!<\/p>\n
After a long, cold winter, spring has finally arrived\u2014the turn of the seasons always signaling the start of baseball. The weather is warming up, Little Leaguers are back on diamonds nationwide and at 8 p.m. ET, MLB players will join them!<\/p>\n
Two of the sport\u2019s most historic franchises, the New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants, will open the 2026 season live on Netflix from beautiful Oracle Park. Giants ace right-hander Logan Webb will make his fifth consecutive Opening Day start, while the Yankees counter with left-hander Max Fried, earning the nod in just his second season with the team.<\/p>\n
While their longtime Bay Area rival gets the prime-time spotlight, the Athletics are wrapping up final preparations in Toronto. Their season begins Friday against the star-studded, reigning American League champion Toronto Blue Jays, who were just two outs away from dethroning the Los Angeles Dodgers in last year\u2019s World Series.<\/p>\n
Seeking to build on that run, Toronto retooled around superstar first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr, adding names like right-hander Dylan Cease, reliever Tyler Rogers and Japanese third baseman Kazuma Okamoto. It may take some getting used to seeing those players in Blue Jays uniforms, just as it will seeing this team without Bo Bichette.<\/p>\n
Following three games in Toronto, the A\u2019s will travel to face the Atlanta Braves from Monday through Wednesday. It is a challenging start, as three of the team\u2019s first four series are on the road. Following those first six games, the A\u2019s return to Sacramento briefly before heading back across the country for a matchup with the Yankees.<\/p>\n
The season will still be young at that point, but those early series could reveal a lot about individual performances and whether this team can keep pace in the division or risk slipping into another early-season spiral like last May. Much of the A\u2019s roster was part of that stretch, so the expectation is that the group will be better equipped to avoid a similar downturn this season.<\/p>\n
So, with Opening Day here:<\/p>\n
How excited are you on a scale of 1\u201310? What are you most excited about and nervous for? Can the A\u2019s pitching be at least average or will it once again struggle and prevent the team from reaching its goals?<\/p>\n
I do not have the capacity, nor the desire to do this. Is anyone in the comments tempted to try this challenge at one of these stadiums this year?<\/p>\n
The A\u2019s are already practicing in Canada ahead of their season-opener Friday against the Blue Jays.<\/p>\n
The Athletics continue to make progress on their new Las Vegas ballpark, with plans to begin play there in 2028.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Morning everyone and happy Wednesday! After a long, cold winter, spring has finally arrived\u2014the turn of the seasons…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2391],"tags":[537,5,4558,4,3226,3537],"class_list":{"0":"post-642652","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-athletics","8":"tag-athletics","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-general","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-mlb-athletics","13":"tag-mlb-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116290246671544620","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}