Happy Opening Day! Our season preview is here (quick catchup on each team, quick categorization of contender status for those looking for that kind of thing), our opening futures plays are here (yesterday) and here (today), if you missed them and they’re off the board when you read this, there’s a decent chance you can still catch up (also, they’re eight of the 520 regular season units, and none are extreme long shots meaning you probably won’t have that different a situation from ours if you’re following along and you can only get something relatively close).
Opening Day!
Sorry, I’m excited. We’ve got seven games on tap, starting in Wrigleville this afternoon and finishing with two games out west.
The best one is Houston’s trip to Anaheim, where Framber Valdez opposes Shohei Ohtani in the opener of a season series between likely the AL West’s two best teams. That’s at 9:38 PM EDT, and it’s available on regional television (or radio—radio’s always fun for baseball, and I think there’s a fairly cheap option through the MLB app that gives you every team’s radio broadcast for the next six months). The Angels are in the same boat they’re almost always in, meaning they have a few studs and a plethora of question marks. The Astros are in the same boat they’ve been in for all of recent memory, meaning they’re good. A little understated this year, but good.
ESPN2 will have the defending champions’ game in Atlanta (8:08 PM EDT), with Karl Ravech doing play-by-play, Eduardo Perez and David Cone in the booth, and Tim Kurkjian involved. Tyler Mahle starts for Cincinnati, Max Fried starts for Atlanta, the weather’s supposed to be nicer than it is for most of these games.
Cubs/Brewers, Episode 1
For the Cubs fans in the room: Today might be rough. FanGraphs gives our guys a 36% chance to win, and Vegas has it comparable. Corbin Burnes is pitching for the Brewers, and if you want a pitch that’s going to produce a lot of stingers on a cold, possibly wet day in Chicago, it’s Corbin Burnes’s cutter. The Cubs will put Kyle Hendricks out there opposite him, and Hendricks can definitely hang, especially against the Brewers’ lineup, but it’s just hard to see the Cubs scoring much today, even with the wind blowing out. Rafael Ortega leads off as the designated hitter, Nick Madrigal is second in the order, Seiya Suzuki is sixth, Jason Heyward gets the start in center field.
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More on other sports tomorrow. Trying to wrap everything up before first pitch today. Viewing schedule as follows, with two screens going at times through MLB TV (not that expensive over a few years, but do your diligence on regional blackouts):
- Milwaukee @ Cubs (2:20 PM EDT)
- Pittsburgh @ St. Louis (4:15 PM EDT) – curious about St. Louis’s bullpen, as a Cubs guy, and Adam Wainwright at 40, also as a Cubs guy
- Mets @ Washington (7:05 PM EDT, ESPN+)
- Cincinnati @ Atlanta (8:08 PM EDT, ESPN2)
- Houston @ Anaheim (9:38 PM EDT)
Play ball.
