It’s time to put those footballs away and take out your baseball gloves. America’s pastime is back.
Spring Training is a chance for every MLB team to start fresh, all previous season records forgotten. More importantly, it is a chance for minor league players to showcase their talents in hopes of making the major league roster.
But the main advantage of Spring Training is getting the players back into the rhythm of baseball after the long offseason. Since these games don’t count, the atmosphere is definitely different than that of a regular season game. It is more fan-friendly and informal.
Because Spring Training stats also don’t necessarily matter, teams can take this opportunity to have fun with it, like allowing comedian Will Ferrell to play every position on 10 different teams, which is what happened back on March 12th. Fans wouldn’t see that during the regular season.
While it is way too early to know who will and will not do well in the upcoming season, many eyes are on the San Diego Padres after they made many blockbuster trades during the offseason, including their deals with players Matt Kemp, Wil Myers and Justin Upton. They are predicted to be one of the frontrunners in their league, and possibly worthy enough of getting a playoff spot in October.
Also some rules are changing due to MLB’s attempt to make a regular baseball game shorter in length. Between every inning a team has around two and a half minutes to warm up before the next inning starts. Although the spring training games that I went to the time limit didn’t seem to make much of a difference; the games were still around 3 hours long. But like with most major rule changes, there will probably be a lot of trial and error over the course of this next season before anything is set and stone.
Spring Training is in its last few weeks and soon the 2015 season will be underway. With the changes in rules and game play and the new and improved teams this season is sure to be exciting from game 1 to game 162.