We’re officially one night’s sleep away from getting the Grapefruit League underway for the Atlanta Braves. With that being said, the team sure took their time before letting everybody know who’d be playing and most importantly, who’d be starting on the mound over in Port Charlotte against the Tampa Bay Rays.
As it turns out, ol’ Cookie Carrasco will be getting the ball to start the first game of spring training for the Braves. Atlanta Braves beat writer for MLB.com Mark Bowman also reported that Mike Yastrzemski, Jonah Heim, Eli White and Jorge Mateo will be playing as well.
As you would imagine since this is a spring training road game in February, we aren’t going to see too many big names in action away from CoolToday Park in North Port. Instead we’re going to see a very young squad with the aforementioned veterans peppered in there, alongside Carlos Carrasco making the start. Carrasco figures to be a very long shot to make the rotation for Opening Day but he’ll be getting the opportunity to hopefully make a good impression in his spring debut.
Bowman also mentioned that John Gil will play, albeit coming off of the bench. There’s a lot of excitement surrounding John Gil lately, as he is entering 2026 following a very good 2025 campaign and has already been garnering a lot of positive attention during spring training so far. It sure seems like he’ll be one of the main prospects to keep an eye on as the spring training progresses and he’ll certainly be one to keep an eye on during tomorrow’s contest.
So while we won’t see a lot of the familiar faces that we’ve grown used to over the years with this current era of the Atlanta Braves, we’re still very, very close to seeing the Atlanta Braves in action once again. Happy days are here again.