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Now that the Braves have locked up Marcell Ozuna for the next few years, most of the attention (other than filling a few minor roster spots) now turns to Spring Training.
There aren’t going to be a ton of storylines for the Braves this spring with most roster spots pretty well set unless the league announces that there will be a universal DH in 2021 which, at this point, feels unlikely. There will be some auditions for who could get some early season starts in the event that Mike Soroka starts the season on the injured list as well some competition for bullpen and bench spots.
However, when Spring Training will start and what the schedule looks like impacts the plans of a lot of fans who plan on making the pilgrimage to spring training. Well, it looks like a resolution to that is coming soon.
MLB in process of finalizing revised Grapefruit League schedule, placing teams in separate “pods” on east and west coasts of Florida, sources tell me and @MattGelb. West-coast teams in FL will play 28 games and east-coast teams 24, making up rest with intrasquad-type matchups.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 8, 2021
With the specter of COVID-19 looming over organized sports, some amount of modifications to the normal spring training scheduling seemed inevitable. According to Rosenthal’s reporting, the Grapefruit League will divide the east and west coast teams into separate groupings and only play games within those ‘pods’. For the Braves, whose ST complex in on the west coast of Florida in North Port, this means they will play 28 spring training games (man, spring training is too long) while the east coast teams will only play 24.
The exact details of this scheduling (especially if there is going to be any other separation happening within the pods with scheduling) are still unknown. As soon as those details are known, we will pass that information along.