April Means Baseball

Now that April is here means the beginning of baseball season. Most teams have their first game of the season beginning on Monday April 6. The only teams that start before April 6 are the St.Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs who play each other on April 5 on EPSN Sunday Night baseball.

Right now the teams are finishing up spring training games and deciding who will fill out their twenty-five man rosters. So there will be some players who will get the bad news that they have not made the team, and be sent to the minor leagues, or cut. The players cut will have to look for another team or possibly retire. There may be players that will be traded to another team as well. 

The Seattle Mariners are one team decided to make up their final roster early doing it last Sunday. One player pitcher Erasmo Ramirez who was out of options was traded to the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday. There were two players that were put on the dis-abled list including shortstop Chris Taylor.  Left hander reliever Tyler Olson is the last player making the roster. He is not officially on the team yet because he is not on the forty man roster; however, will add him on before Sunday. The reason he is not on yet is precautionary by the Mariners just in case he gets injured before Sunday. If you are confused there are two different types of rosters. The twenty-five man roster is the one the teams play throughout the season until September where they can extend the rosters. The forty man roster is more complicated. You have the twenty-five players that are on the twenty-five man roster plus fifteen players that are in the minor leagues. If you are a player that is added to the twenty-five man roster you must first be on the forty man roster or added to it. I hope that answers any questions. If not ask someone who is a big baseball fan to see if they can explain it in more detail. Unfortunately some things in baseball are complicated to explain without a lot of detail.

The reason the Mariners decided to have the twenty-five player roster settled a week before the season started so the players would feel comfortable and know who all the their fellow players would be. Also, they can become focused on the coming season.

What always makes the beginning of baseball season exciting is that all teams begin at 0-0. It gives the baseball fans hope that their favorite team has a chance to have a really good season. Of course, it will not happen for all teams. There can be different reasons for teams not to have a good season. Most likely the team is losing because they do not have the talent to play with other teams. It has been over a decade since the Seattle Mariners have had a real good team though last season they won eighty-seven games and missed the playoffs by one game. They added a few new players this season which should improve their record and get them into the playoffs.

Another reason a team may not have a good season is that they come up with injuries and are unable to come up with players to replace them. This happened last year with the Texas Rangers where they were expected to contend for their division and make the playoffs but they had so many injuries that they ended up with the worst record in baseball. Fortunately this does not happen very often. With the injuries the Rangers looked more like a minor league team. This year the Rangers hope to rebound to have a good season. It is hard to tell at this point if that will happen.

So to all you baseball fans I hope your teams start out good in April so you can enjoy a very good baseball season.