There are many things people look forward to every year: major holidays, the Super Bowl and opening day of Major League Baseball. The teams who make up the MLB have an entire month to play their spring training games prior to the start up of the MLB official season.
Opening day is something many people look forward to, like Christmas or New Years. The MLB season does not officially start for another month, but people are already beginning to put on their game faces. Opening day is March 31 and the season will end Sept. 29.
People do not get too excited until the season officially starts, but they have spring training to get prepared for opening day. Spring training is a good chance for the fans to prepare themselves for the excitement of the official season.
Spring training is also a great way for the players to get themselves prepared as well.
The spring training season began the third week in February and lasts until a few days shy of opening day. Spring training is a way for the teams to, in a sense, warm up for the harsh season that lies ahead of them.
Each team will play as close to 30 games as possible during spring training. However, with the short time frame, games rained out or postponed for whatever reason are very difficult to make up during that time.
Once the official season starts, teams will play 162 games. Of those games, the teams will play 76 total division games, playing three home games and three road games in each of the 19 match-ups.
Each team will play a total of 66 non-divisional games played out in two series at home and away. And, to finish out the season, teams will play 20 interleague games, which tallies up to the total of 162 games.
Postseason play will begin as soon as all games up to the date of September 29 have been finished and all postponed games have been made up. The spring training games are basically a warm up for the official season and the regular season is basically a warm up for the postseason, the only difference; not every team makes it to the postseason.