MLB Opening Day 2026, Should You Care?
MLB Opening Day is fast approaching. The baseball offseason is a painfully slow and annoying period of time, but it's almost over. At the end of the month, we'll have made it. The first real baseball game since that electric Game 7 in the World Series is on March 25. The New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants will kick things off.
Should anyone care? This season, like last season, feels like an inevitable Los Angeles Dodgers' romp. 162 games stretched over six full months and some change is an incredibly long season. It seems to drag on forever, and the games don't matter as much until the summer and fall. Does Opening Day matter at all?
Why we should care about MLB Opening Day 2026
On MLB Opening Day 2026, at least 20 teams will have some semblance of hope. Fans of the Colorado Rockies, Chicago White Sox, A's, Minnesota Twins, Miami Marlins, Washington Nationals, and Pittsburgh Pirates probably don't, but everyone else is hopeful of a good season.
By the middle of the summer, we'll all know how good these teams actually are. We will learn whether or not the New York Yankees' risky offseason paid off. We'll know whether or not the incoming New York Mets can take them back to contention.
The Boston Red Sox did a lot of offseason work, so we'll get to see if they can continue their upward rise. The Cleveland Guardians and Detroit Tigers are two similar teams in the AL Central, and we'll have a better idea of what those teams are.
But on MLB Opening Day, the world's your oyster. Each and every team is theoretically capable (with those few exceptions above) of putting together a good season. They won't all win the World Series, but sometimes, that's not the end of the world. If you're a fan of the Arizona Diamondbacks, then winning 95 games and making a playoff run would be awesome.
If you like the Milwaukee Brewers, then another division title while losing good players every offseason would be fantastic. For the Cincinnati Reds, a 50-50 season for Elly de la Cruz would be sensational, regardless of what the team does.
Everything is on the table
On Opening Day, that's all possible. The season has yet to unfold, so any and all possible outcomes are on the table. It's not likely to happen, but maybe the Toronto Blue Jays win 120 games and set the all-time record. It can't be ruled out on MLB Opening Day.
But the biggest reason that Opening Day matters is because the Los Angeles Dodgers haven't flexed their might on the rest of baseball yet. By the time the summer and fall roll around, the world will know exactly why the Dodgers are favored to win, and it'll end up being pretty frustrating.
The Dodgers won it all in 2024, and then they added Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki, among others. They naturally won it all again in 2025, and they somehow added Edwin Diaz and Kyle Tucker, the best free agent on the market. They're a juggernaut and a powerhouse that no fans expect their team to beat in the postseason.
But for now, there's still the possibility that Tucker doesn't fit with their lineup. Maybe age regression finally kicks in for Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts. Perhaps Shohei Ohtani doesn't hold up quite as well pitching and hitting, and both areas suffer a little bit.
On Opening Day, that's all possible, which means the rest of the sport has hope. For now, that's really important, because that hope is likely to fade into oblivion by the time June and July get here.
