Questions surround contending teams as MLB prepares for Opening Day

• Major League Baseball’s 125th Opening Day begins in full on Thursday with 14 games. It starts in New York as the Yankees take on the Milwaukee Brewers.
• The defending American League champion Yankees have more than half a dozen players on the injured list, including three starting pitchers.
• The Los Angeles Dodgers are already 2-0 on the season having beaten the Chicago Cubs in the Tokyo Series.

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Thursday, March 27, is Opening Day, which many baseball fans think of as a national holiday. This year is the 125th season for Major League Baseball and there will be roughly 10 hours of game action featuring 28 teams.

Who gets things started on Opening Day?

The Milwaukee Brewers and New York Yankees will get it going in the Bronx at 3 p.m. EST. The Yankees were one of spring training’s biggest stories because of their long injury list. Ace Gerrit Cole will miss the season after having surgery on his injured elbow. Meanwhile, two other starting pitchers, Luis Gil and Clarke Schmidt, are also on the injured list. Sluggers Giancarlo Stanton and DJ LeMahieu have not played in spring training.

As a result, general manager Brian Cashman is considering what moves the defending A.L. champs can make right now, calling it a “work in progress.”

“Obviously, the roster changes all the time, so it’s certainly a different roster this year than how it ended last year,” Cashman said. “And so we’re learning a lot about new guys.”

Who can challenge the Yankees in the American League?

The question is, can the rest of the American League take advantage of the Yankees’ misfortune? The Texas Rangers believe they can. Many pundits and analysts peg the Rangers as favorites to win the West, but it will be a close race.

Texas opens at home on Thursday against the Boston Red Sox. However, manager Bruce Bochy is going to have to worry about the team’s pitching for a bit.

“There’s a lot of different scenarios that could happen there,” Bochy said. “We need length in the bullpen, we know that, but we could have an opener, things like that until we get this thing sorted out.”

Two teams in the American League will play in minor league parks this season. The Tampa Bay Rays will call the Yankees’ spring training facility home after Hurricane Helene destroyed the roof of Tropicana Field in September 2024. And the A’s have moved from Oakland to Sacramento for the next few years while they await a new ballpark in Las Vegas.

What are the big headlines in the National League?

In the National League, all eyes will be on outfielder Juan Soto who makes his New York Mets debut against the Astros in Houston on Thursday. The slugger moved from the Yankees to Queens, New York, for a record $765 million over the next 15 seasons.

“I think we’re in a good spot, in a really good spot,” Soto said. “I think we have a really talented group of a lot of guys –– we have a lot of outfielders, we have a lot of infielders, so I think we are really loaded as a team.”

Can anyone dethrone the champs?

The defending World Series champs, the Los Angeles Dodgers, are also “loaded,” to use Soto’s phrase. They have already had their Opening Day, beating the Chicago Cubs in back-to-back games in the Tokyo Series.

They’ll host Detroit ace Tarik Skubal in their home opener, countering with their own Cy Young winner, Blake Snell. While the Dodgers have the talent to challenge the major league record for wins in a season, 116, Snell says they won’t hit their stride until this summer.

“We got to learn each other –– I got to learn what it’s like to be on this team, when it’s just our team playing real big league meaningful games,” Snell said. “So, the first two months will be a lot of just learning, and then from there, just getting better and better.”

Other contenders in the National League include the Philadelphia Phillies, Arizona Diamondbacks, San Diego Padres and Atlanta Braves. The latter two face off in the season opening series in San Diego.