Our long nightmare has come to an end as the Atlanta Braves finally reached the end of spring training yesterday and we are now just one day away from Opening Day. The Braves have the day off today as they fly back from North Port and head to DC where they will be taking on the lowly Washington Nationals in the season opener.
The final spring training game was yesterday and the Braves closed it out in style. Ronald Acuna Jr. was setting the table in the leadoff spot and Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris II came up with clutch hits to help Atlanta overcome a bit of a rocky start from Charlie Morton to chalk up yet another spring training win to close out the 2023 pre-season.
More Braves News
Now we must turn our attention to the 2023 regular season. A few days ago, we had a post go up detailing your options for how to watch Opening Day if you are not fortunate enough to be able to make the trip to DC (which is likely mostly of you).
Back in February, we also took a look at the first month of the Braves' schedule which is honestly pretty tough including two series against the Padres who might be better than the Dodgers this year, a series against the Cardinals whose lineup is pretty spooky, and a series against the very expensive Mets who should compete with the Braves at the top of the NL East all year. We should know quite a bit about this Braves team pretty early on.
MLB News
On the eve of Opening Day, it looks like the Guardians are finalizing an extension with one of their young cornerstones. Andres Gimenez was a popular names for Braves fans to float to try to trade for to replace Dansby Swanson this past offseason. However, Cleveland seems to know how valuable Gimenez is to their club and they are close to signing him to a seven year, $106.5 million contract extension.
Meanwhile, the Giants seem like they have a lot of confidence in embattled president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi as they already announced their intention to exercise an option in his contract and have even discussed a longer term extension. Things haven't exactly gone the Giants way last year, but they had a great season in 2021 and Zaidi has been active in trying to bring stars to the Bay Area including a high profile pursuit of Carlos Correa before that pesky ankle of his caused them to pull the plug on that pursuit.