MLB season preview: Robot umpires, Dodgers' try for 3 in row, Rays' return to Trop as lockout looms
Baseball is changing at a dizzying speed in 2026 with the arrival of robot umpires, the return home of the Tampa Bay Rays and an alphabet soup of networks televising the games in perhaps the last season before a labor shutdown
By RONALD BLUMNEW YORK (AP) — Baseball is changing at a dizzying speed in 2026 with the arrival of robot umpires, the return home of the Tampa Bay Rays and an alphabet soup of networks televising games in perhaps the last season before a labor shutdown.
Much has transpired in the 4 1/2 months since the Los Angeles Dodgers rallied in World Series Game 7 to beat Toronto in 11 innings and become the since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees.
There was the usual free agent musical chairs that saw , , and .
of a World Baseball Classic with .
But looming above the usual excitement for opening day on Wednesday is the possibility of no games in a year.
as players' association head and as talk intensified about a possible . Major League Baseball is likely to , leaving 2027 in limbo.
Cy Young Award winners Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal are on the eight-man executive subcommittee that directs collective bargaining.
“We need people that are invested and kind of have status among players and within the game to go into the negotiations and be comfortable going toe to toe with the owners,” Skenes said. “It's not something that I sought out. Some guys nominated me for the position and that’s not something you say no to.”
Following , MLB decided last September to .
While human umps call every pitch, each team has the ability to challenge two calls per game, retaining the challenge if successful, and have the possibility of at least one more in each extra inning.
“You want get the egregiously wrong calls fixed and you want make sure you get it right in a big spot,” three-time Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander said.
ABS won't be used for a two-game series between Arizona and San Diego in Mexico City on April 25-26, for the Philadelphia-Minnesota game at the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa, on Aug. 13 or the Atlanta-Milwaukee matchup in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, on Aug. 23.
Regular-season are split among Fox/FS1, TBS, ESPN, NBC/Peacock, AppleTV and Netflix. NBC's networks take over the Wild Card Series from ABC/ESPN.
In addition, MLB will produce and distribute the local telecasts of 14 teams following the financial problems of Main Street Sports Group, which operates the regional FanDuel Sports Network stations.
When the New York Yankees play the MLB season opener at the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday, the game will be exclusively on Netflix.
After becoming the first team to win consecutive championships since the 1998-2000 Yankees, the Dodgers try to become just the fifth group to win three in a row, joining those Yankees, five by the 1949-53 Yankees, four by the 1936-39 Yankees and three by the 1972-74 Oakland Athletics.
“When you're a Dodger, people want to take us down. They want to beat us,” . “It's a Game 7. So I think that we've got to look ahead and say that this is going to be harder than it's ever been and we got to work even harder. And so my ask as a team, as an organization is to push ourselves even more. We already got the talent. There isn't any more talent in a major league clubhouse than in this room.”
Coming off his , Shohei Ohtani is expected to be a two-way player over a full season. He following his .
Tampa Bay returns to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg after a season playing home games across the bay at Steinbrenner Field, the spring training home of the Yankees.
The Rays were 41-40 at Steinbrenner last year, their lowest home winning percentage since 2016. They drew 786,750 for an average of 9,713, selling out 61 games.
“There is genuine, authentic excitement to get back to the Trop,” manager Kevin Cash said. “We've played well in the Trop. We’ve had a lot of success in the Trop. And I think we’re going back to something that’s probably going to be a little bit newer, a little better than maybe as we left it because they had to do so many repairs.”
Four players could reach 400 career home runs this year.
Manny Machado starts the season at 369, followed by Freddie Freeman at 368, Aaron Judge at 367 and Bryce Harper at 363.
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