The long wait is over the baseball lovers in the Philadelphia area. The Philadelphia Phillies start off the Spring Training schedule for this season today in Florida with two split-squad games. The Phillies and the Tigers will play at 1:05 PM from Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland, Florida, and another split-squad team will play at home at BayCare Ballpark in Clearwater vs. the New York Yankees also at 1:05 PM. The game vs. the Yankees will be televised on NBC Sports Philadelphia.
Embed from Getty ImagesPhillies manager Rob Thomson, will be starting off his first full season as manager of the Phillies without the ‘interim’ tag. Thomson signed a two-year contract after guiding the Phillies to a World Series appearance last year. He became just the 56th manager in Phillies history. That contract length didn’t exactly seem fitting as the Phils were nowhere on the radar to make it to the World Series, but they did, and Thomson got the two-year deal. Even if they didn’t make the playoffs, I think the Phils would have signed him for 2 years.
Today will be a day to ‘shake the rust off’ for players, Nick Nelson is starting the game vs. the Yankees, and yesterday, the Padres started off their season for Spring, and Manny Machado became the first player to have a strike called on him for not being ready for a pitch in time for 2023, so that is going to be something we will see a lot this season. Time now creeps into baseball rules in a big way and of course some other rule changes.
The New York Mets start their Spring Training schedule against the World Series champion Houston Astros, and the Atlanta Braves will play the Boston Red Sox today down in Florida. The NL East is projected to be very close with the Mets, Braves, and Phillies teams all expected to do well.
A lot of eyes will be on Nick Castellanos this season, his expectations of last year didn’t quite seem like they were met. Though he did do well in the playoffs, making some key plays that were very important to the Phillies moving on and getting to the World Series. I think he’ll settle in this year, his move has been over and now he is more acclimated to the area. Here his mom tweeted out an awesome video of Nick seemingly ready to start ‘hitting’ as he said originally when he signed his contract here.
In the Zone 👇🏻 https://t.co/6DkFhsiRZa
— Michelle Castellanos (@michcast05) February 23, 2023
Other than the Phils taking the field, in the off season, the Phillies main broadcasters, Tom McCarthy on television, and Scott Franzke on radio, were both extended to multi-year deals. Rhys Hoskins will be a free agent after this season, Rhys tore the cover off the ball in 2022 with 30 HR’s but his defense left a lingering doubt on whether he was the first baseman of the future for this Phillies team. If he can improve his defense this season, and continue his great hitting, he won’t have to worry at all about a big contract, even if it doesn’t come from the Phillies organization.
So enjoy the first day’s games of Spring Training, the first being televised since we last saw the Phillies in the World Series for 2022.
