MLB Opening Day 2024 results: Yankees win close one in Houston; Diamondbacks score 14 runs in one inning

GOODYEAR, Ariz. — Before the 2023 season, Cincinnati Reds general manager Nick Krall called his counterpart in Kansas City, J.J. Piccolo, to ask how the Royals handled Bobby Witt Jr.’s first year in the big leagues.

Krall knew he had a special shortstop (or three) coming his way that season and wanted a little insight into what to look for.

“I called a handful of guys,” Krall said. “People who go through those things sometimes and can look back and wish they’d done differently.”

Krall said he makes those kinds of calls often. So many conversations he has with others in his position are more likely to be about those things than a trade.

Witt made his debut in 2022, so Krall knew it was still fresh on Piccolo’s mind. With Elly De La Cruz knocking on the door of the big leagues, Krall sensed he’d be calling up his own potentially franchise-altering shortstop soon. Piccolo’s advice was to trust his judgment and stick to his convictions. It’s advice that will probably carry over into this season as well because while a player’s rookie year can be difficult, in some ways, the second year can be harder.

Last year, Witt struggled at the start of his second season but improved so much over the last half that he finished in the top 10 of American League MVP voting. The team responded by signing him to a contract extension of nearly $300 million.

That’s the best-case scenario. De La Cruz, who debuted in June last year with a style and skill set that quickly made him a fixture in MLB marketing materials, only has to glimpse to his left in the Reds’ infield to see an example of things going the other way. After winning Rookie of the Year in 2021, Jonathan India literally limped through the 2022 season with a hamstring injury and saw all his numbers tumble.

What’s the difference between improving upon a great rookie year and not living up to those expectations?

For Witt, it was identifying ways to improve and approaching them with patience.

“Above all else, Bobby’s a quick learner,” Piccolo said. “The way he can self-evaluate … He recognized some things that he thought he needed to improve upon. He scuffled a little bit, even through the first two months (of 2023), but then he was able to eliminate chasing some pitches up in the zone. I think he really had to settle in.”

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The Mets picked Yohan Ramirez and Michael Tonkin, two right-handed pitchers, for the final two spots in their bullpen. Sean Reid-Foley, the other pitcher who competed for one of the openings, will start the year on the 15-day injured list with right shoulder impingement. Reid-Foley, Tonkin and Ramirez were all out of minor-league options. Reid-Foley dealt with an arm issue in the middle of spring training, but then returned to pitch last weekend.

There were no surprises when the Braves announced their Opening Day roster, which was set nearly a week ago and only changed in one place since — when Jesse Chavez signed Monday after being released by the White Sox. He replaced Jackson Stephens, who was outrighted to Triple A and instead opted for free agency. Atlanta doesn't open until Friday (3:05 p.m.) after Thursday's game at Philly was postponed by rain.

Braves Opening Day roster

Starting pitchers (5): Spencer Strider, Max Fried, Chris Sale, Charlie Morton, Reynaldo López

Bullpen (8): LHP Tyler Matzek, Aaaron Hummer, A.J. Minter, Dylan Lee; RHs Joe Jiménez, Pierce Johnson, Jesse Chavez, closer Raisel Iglesias

Infielders (5): Matt Olson, Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley, Orlando Arcia, Luis Guillorme

Catchers (2): Travis d'Arnaud, Sean Murphy

Outfielders (5): Ronald Acuña Jr., Michael Harris II, Adam Duvall, Jarred Kelenic, Forrest Wall

Designated hitter (1): Marcell Ozuna

Spring training is blue skies, green grass and rose-colored glasses.

It’s executives and coaches in every camp telling you they like their squads, that there are some pieces here who can surprise, that the outsiders don’t see what they see. And as easy as it is to dismiss such chatter, it’s important to remember baseball’s history: Somewhere, those pie-in-the-sky predictions are about to come true.

In 16 of the last 20 years, half of baseball’s postseason teams had not qualified the prior year. In both 2022 and 2023, six out of 12 playoff teams were new. Last year that included a 100-win division winner and the two teams who played in the World Series. Four teams that were consensus if not quite unanimous picks to play in the postseason fell short of October, in some cases by a large margin.

So to divine the future, let’s look to the past. For all 30 teams, I’ve looked at their projected win total (via Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA system) and found a historical analogue since 2008 — another team projected to win a similar amount that nevertheless made the postseason. The fits aren’t perfect and the methodology had to improvise — some teams are projected to be really bad — and they’re not all best-case scenarios, because only so many teams have won the World Series. And while occasionally I’ll get tongue-in-cheek, the exercise here is mostly earnest. Because you’re about to be surprised.

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The story I co-wrote with Fabian Ardaya about the Los Angeles Dodgers’ $1.4 billion offseason is one of my all-time favorites. It was a blast retracing each move, not just from the Dodgers’ perspective, but also from those of other clubs. It also was a lot of fun talking to country music star Brad Paisley and television actor Brian Baumgartner, who both played bit roles in the drama.

Fabian and I began working on the story months ago. The idea was to publish it Opening Day. But something happened in the interim: The Dodgers’ firing of Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, whom Ohtani’s attorneys accused of engaging in “massive theft” from the $700 million superstar to pay off gambling debts.

Our story was pretty much written when news of Mizuhara’s dismissal broke on March 20, complete with conflicting accounts from the interpreter on what actually happened. I won’t speak for Fabian, but with just over a week until our publication date, I went into a mild panic. Selfishly, I was concerned that the story, which includes details of the Dodgers’ pursuit of Ohtani, might no longer work.

We decided to monitor how events played out and then choose how to proceed. After Ohtani spoke Monday, accusing Mizuhara of both stealing from him and lying to him, we decided to push forward while noting the stunning turn of events.

The story is full of entertaining details about Ohtani’s and Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s free agencies, and the wild party at Paisley’s barn in Nashville that helped accelerate the Dodgers’ efforts to trade for Tyler Glasnow and sign him to an extension. We needed to make one final adjustment on Wednesday, incorporating the team’s signing of catcher Will Smith to a 10-year, $140 million extension (more on that in a minute). Because of course the Dodgers wanted to spend some more!

Anyway, we hope people enjoy reading the story as much as we enjoyed working on it. No matter how one views Ohtani’s current situation, the fact remains: A team might never put together another offseason like the one the Dodgers just did. The twists and turns just kept coming, from beginning to end.

Read the full story here.

The Baltimore Orioles open their season against the Los Angeles Angels at 3:05 p.m. ET. New lead owner David Rubenstein spoke with Brittany Ghiroli ahead of the game.

BALTIMORE — Last summer on Nantucket, the future of the Baltimore Orioles started to take shape.

David Rubenstein, the billionaire co-founder of the Carlyle Group, a global private equity investment company based in Washington, D.C., owns a house on the island. So does John Angelos.

For years Rubenstein had been intrigued by the idea of getting into professional sports ownership. Angelos, who took over day-to-day operation of the club in 2018 when his late father, Peter, was in poor health, had long been entangled in sale rumors, which he vehemently denied as late as December. The pair met one night on Nantucket, at John Angelos’ request, according to sources briefed on discussions but not authorized to speak publicly, and Angelos tried to sell Rubenstein on becoming an Orioles minority partner.

Rubenstein, who was born and raised in Baltimore, still has ties to the area. Friends would bemoan the team’s state of affairs under John Angelos, with the team’s payroll falling to among the lowest in baseball and free-agent spending all but disappearing. Rubenstein was one of a small group of people who had the kind of wealth necessary to buy the team and change course.

Read the full story here.

Did you find the Chicago Cubs annoying? Craig Counsell, the new Cubs manager who was hired away from the Milwaukee Brewers, chuckled, exhaled, and quickly said: “no, no, no.” Still, as a longtime rival of his new club, he could appreciate the framing of the question.

Counsell took over the Brewers on May 4, 2015, coming down from the front office to apply what he learned across 16 years as a major-league infielder who survived on preparation and intelligence. At that time, the Cubs had hired Joe Maddon away from the Tampa Bay Rays, signed Jon Lester to a six-year, $155 million contract and assembled Baseball America’s No. 1 farm system. Coming off five consecutive fifth-place finishes, the Cubs had also participated in a Bloomberg Businessweek cover story that declared “a sports empire is in bloom.”

“Look, when you’re in sports, when you lose, it’s annoying,” Counsell said. “The other team’s annoying. It’s the team that beat you. That’s not the word I would use.”

Counsell chooses his words carefully and expresses those words concisely. His ability to communicate and process information made him a quick study in Milwaukee’s dugout. His track record of results with a small-market franchise — five playoff appearances in the last six years — made him the highest-paid manager in the game. His decision to leave the Brewers — the hometown team that once employed his father — angered some fans in Wisconsin who viewed it as a betrayal.

Maybe it was Chicago all along.

The Cubs arguably did not sign a bigger free agent this past offseason, handing Counsell a five-year, $40 million contract and then mostly running back the same team that missed the playoffs by one game last season. There were targeted moves to bolster the bullpen (Héctor Neris) and the rotation (Shota Imanaga). Re-signing Cody Bellinger addressed several roster deficiencies. Another year of experience will benefit the organization’s strong nucleus of young talent. But the operating assumption is that Counsell will wring more from this group than David Ross.

All this makes you wonder what Counsell really thought of the Cubs. Maddon thoroughly enjoyed the spotlight. Theo Epstein was named “World’s Greatest Leader” by Fortune magazine. Cubs fans showed up to Miller Park/American Family Field in droves to drink beers and cheer against the Brewers. Cubs players and team officials made two separate trips to the White House to celebrate their 2016 World Series title.

“This is how it works,” Counsell said, “especially in that era when you played each other so much. When there’s a team that’s the best team — and they were the best team (in the division at that time) going to the playoffs and making good runs — you’re the team trying to figure out a way to beat them.

“When a team’s really good, you respect that. There’s a respect for that. Always. Every team has their thing and the way they do it. But they’re winning, so you respect that. That’s how I’ve always seen it. Frankly, I would like to think that I learned a lot from Joe Maddon.

“I got to manage a lot of games against Joe Maddon, and I learned a lot from him, for sure. I was always trying to understand. They’re winning, man. We got to figure out how to win. I’m going to watch the team that’s winning a lot.”

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The Atlanta Braves had their Thursday opener against the Philadelphia Phillies postponed due to weather conditions. They will play instead on Friday at 3:05 p.m. David O'Brien spoke with starter Spencer Strider ahead of that game.

NORTH PORT, Fla. — Spencer Strider dove headlong into biomechanics, diet and strength and conditioning while rehabbing from Tommy John elbow surgery in college. He honed his delivery to better fit his physique and adopted a vegan diet that reduced inflammation and made him feel better physically and ethically. If you’re an Atlanta Braves fan, maybe you know all that.

But there’s so much more.

The 2023 major-league strikeouts and wins leader took a similarly well-researched, exhaustive approach to developing a new curveball this winter, a pitch to better complement his fastball and slider than his changeup did last season. The Braves ace deployed the curve with impressive results at spring training — an 0.79 ERA and 35 strikeouts; no other MLB pitcher had 30 Ks — and will unveil it to a wider audience Thursday when he starts Opening Day against the Phillies in Philadelphia.

And here’s the thing about Strider, who on the mound is all mustache, expressionless glare, massive thighs and perfectly repeated movements, piling up strikeouts while looking like the Most Serious Man in Baseball. Off the field, he is entirely different.

Strider, 25, doesn’t just immerse himself in the observational humor of irreverent Larry David-created sitcoms “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” he keeps a document in his phone to log his thoughts on things he notices throughout the day — at home, driving to the ballpark, on the team bus, walking around another city, wherever.

“I keep all kinds of comedic observations,” Strider said, smiling before adding, “Working towards my second career as a stand-up. So I’m always trying to play little bits out in the open and see what works, see who laughs. Charlie’s a good barometer for that. If he doesn’t find it funny, he’ll stare right through me and then look away. But he gives you a good laugh if he thinks it’s funny.”

The Detroit Tigers open their season against the Chicago White Sox at 4:10 ET Thursday. Cody Stavenhagen spoke with Tigers top prospect Colt Keith ahead of his debut.

LAKELAND, Fla. — Colt Keith was in Ohio, visiting a friend who was building a cabin in the woods of the Buckeye State, when the phone call came.

On the other end of the phone, Matt Paul, his agent, delivered the news with excitement and urgency. We got a call. You need to get down here.

Emotion shocked through Keith’s body. “Just overwhelming joy,” he said.

Soon the Detroit Tigers prospect called his parents and told them the latest. Even though Keith had never taken a major-league at-bat, even though there were persistent questions about his defense, even though he’s only 22, the idea of a lucrative offer was not, in this case, something that caught Keith off guard. He and his agent had considered the possibility before. “We actually talked about it,” his mother, Mary Keith, said. When other players such as Milwaukee’s Jackson Chourio signed big-money deals early in their careers, Keith and Paul pondered the question: If the Tigers ever offered something like that, what would it take?

The fact itself reveals something about Keith, a serious baseball prospect with a mono-focal mindset, a player who has fulfilled every aspect of an ambitious vision so far in his young career — including a pre-debut extension that guarantees him at least $28.6 million over the next six years.

“You get this idea that the guys signing these big contracts are like this far-off person and unapproachable,” Mary said. “They’re not. They’re just the next-door kid.”

Over the next six months, Keith will embark on a new sort of journey: The chance at 162 games in the big leagues, and all the pressures and perils that can come with it.

Read the full story here.

The Houston Astros open their season at 4:10 p.m. ET against the New York Yankees. Chandler Rome spoke with Alex Bregman ahead of the game.

Around the time he turned 13, Alex Bregman began obsessing over his process. Baseball seemed simple to the boy who turned an unassisted triple play during his first T-ball game, but natural aptitude alone wouldn’t take him where he wanted to go. Love of the game isn’t enough to be great and Bregman accepts nothing less.

A motivational speaker named Eric Thomas once asked, “How bad do you want it?” Bregman only believed he knew. His ascension from prep catcher to one of amateur baseball’s best prospects contained one constant: listening to Thomas’ speech while watching an accompanying YouTube video “literally every day.”

“When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful,” Thomas said.

Bound to his process, Bregman became the brash, baseball-addicted answer to the Houston Astros’ hope. He is a fixture of this franchise’s greatest era, a constant in an otherwise chaotic eight years, and he epitomized a culture that’s kept the club afloat.

That 22-year-old kid who broke into the big leagues is now nearing 30 — a father and husband, a burgeoning businessman with a more cerebral public persona. Bregman ponders answers instead of providing bulletin board material and is the closest thing Houston has to a clubhouse spokesman. Supreme confidence still exists, even if Bregman doesn’t display it like he once did.

Read the full story here.

I love numbers. You’ve probably noticed that. But have I ever explained why?

In baseball, every number tells a story. That’s why.

So this is the column where I let the numbers tell the story of the baseball season that’s about to unfold. You can thank me later — right after you finish this 2024 edition of The Numbers That Define Baseball.

The Magic Number: 64

WHAT IT MEANS: Would you believe there were 64 pitchers who threw a pitch at least 100 mph last season? I’m no math major, but that means that if your team doesn’t have multiple dudes who can light up triple digits, you’re not even trying — because the average team now has two of them. That. Is. Wild.

Fun fact: Two teams had five pitchers who hit 100 mph last year. Bet you can’t name them. They were (of course) the A’s (Mason Miller, Joe Boyle, Luis Medina, Lucas Erceg, Shintaro Fujinami) and the Angels (Carlos Estévez, Ben Joyce, Reynaldo Lopez, Jose Soriano and some guy named Ohtani).

Fun fact No. 2: Only three teams employed no pitchers who threw 100: the Mets, Red Sox and Rockies.

Fun fact No. 3: As recently as 2018, only 37 pitchers were clocked throwing 100-plus. I’m assuming that back in, say, 1958, there were none. But Statcast was on the fritz that season. So we’re just sticking to documentable facts around here.

Read the full story here.

The Tampa Bay Rays open their season at 4:10 p.m. ET against the Toronto Blue Jays. Chad Jennings spoke with Brandon Lowe ahead of the game.

The hundredth home run came on a fifth-inning changeup that Tampa Bay Rays second baseman Brandon Lowe sent 421 feet to dead center field. It might have been iconic, should have been iconic, had it happened when it was supposed to.

By games played, no second baseman in history reached 100 career home runs faster than Lowe. He got there in his 477th game, faster than Chase Utley (580 games), Jeff Kent (697) or Robinson Canó (797), and outpacing Ryne Sandberg (984), Dustin Pedroia (1,045) and Jose Altuve (1,131). But Lowe hit No. 100 not in the early months of his fourth big-league season but late in his sixth, in August of last year. Barely a month before he fouled a ball off his kneecap to land, yet again, on the injured list.

Due to a bad back, bruised shin and a global pandemic, Lowe has only once had 400 at-bats in a season. Listed at 5-foot-10 and 185 pounds, Lowe has made the most of his limited frame, but he’s been easy to overlook — or even forget — when he’s disappeared for long stretches.

“He understands, pound for pound, how to maximize his body,” Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander said. “But that does push the body to its limits when it comes to (the torque) it creates.”

Now approaching his seventh major-league season, and with the Rays holding team options to keep him in 2025 and 2026, next offseason, Lowe, 29, has adjusted his notoriously meticulous pregame routine to strengthen and protect his back. He said he’s as healthy as he’s been in years, which is fortunate timing for the Rays, who will be without shortstop Wander Franco indefinitely and might depend on offensive production while five of their starting pitchers open the season on the IL.

What better time to bring back one of the game’s most powerful second basemen and try to keep him in the lineup for 150 or so games?

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Austin Mock's model — fresh off a sim of the entire 2024 season — is up and running for Opening Day. As enthusiasts of home runs, MLB's Beat the Streak game, and strikeouts (who doesn't love strikeouts??) we asked Austin for three interesting outputs from the model for today's games. If you're looking to enhance your Opening Day experience with some legal wagering ... these should help as well!

(All odds via BetMGM as of 9 a.m. ET on 3/28)

K Prop of the Day

• Zac Gallen under 5.5 (+125)
• Model has him at 5.3 strikeouts

Beat the Streak pick

• Luis Arraez (74.9% chance of getting a hit)

"Dinger of the Day"

• CJ Abrams to hit a home run (+575)
• The model says the odds should be: +465

The American League East may not be the juggernaut it once was, but it’s no cakewalk, either. All five teams fashion themselves as contenders, and even the projected last-place team, the Boston Red Sox, is expected to have at least a .500 record. The Baltimore Orioles are on the way up with top prospects debuting all over the diamond, the New York Yankees just acquired Juan Soto, and the Tampa Bay Rays continue to churn out arms. It wasn’t so long ago that the Toronto Blue Jays were a trendy World Series pick, as well. The AL East is unlike any other division in that there are simply no bad teams, no genuine weak spots, no place for contenders to fatten up.

The teams are ranked by their odds of winning the division.

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