After a 2017 season that put the Braves on the road more often than not in the early going, they’ll have ample opportunity to win over the home crowd next spring.
The Braves and Major League Baseball released their tentative 2018 schedules Tuesday. The Braves will host the Phillies on Thursday, March 29, the earliest opening day in MLB history.
It will be SunTrust Park’s first season opener. The Braves have alternated home and away openers since 2014.
The new CBA trimmed two days off spring training, pushing pitcher and catcher voluntary reporting dates to 43 days before the major league opener. In other words, Braves pitchers and catchers would report Feb. 14.
The change spreads each MLB team’s 162 regular season games over the course of 187 days, rather than 183.
The Braves’ schedule opens with a six-game homestand against the Phillies and Nationals. The Braves will have a rare Sunday off-day April 1 between the series, which is Easter.
SunTrust Park will see thirteen baseball games before May: The Braves play the Phillies six times, the Mets four and the Nationals three. The Braves played seven home games before May in 2017.
The Braves will face National League East-rivals Philadelphia and Washington 10 times at home, with New York and Miami playing nine. Thirty-eight of 81 home games will come against divisional rivals.
The home slate also includes 18 games against the NL West, 15 against the Central and 10 interleague. The Orioles (June 22-24), Blue Jays (July 10-11), Rays (Aug. 28-29) and Red Sox (Sept. 3-5) visit SunTrust Park from the junior circuit.
There will be 46 home games before the All-Star break, four more than this season. The Braves will play 49 road games before the break and just 32 after.
The Braves will play at Fenway Park against the Red Sox on May 25-27. The teams split a pair at Fenway in April 2016, but Boston won the season series 3-1. The Braves are 9-24 against Boston since 2005.
Additionally, the Braves face the Yankees at Yankee Stadium for the first time since 2012 on June 2-4. The two had similar success in the 1990s, with the Yankees beating the Braves twice in the World Series, but haven’t seen much of each other since.
This trip will mark the Braves’ second time at the newer Yankee Stadium. They’ve met in New York only nine times since 2000.
For the second consecutive year, the Braves will cross the northern border to play the Blue Jays, on June 19-20.
The first West Coast road trip occurs June 4-10 in San Diego and Los Angeles. They go back Sept. 6-12 to face the Diamondbacks and Giants.
Similar to this season, when the Braves will finish on a seven-game trip, they’ll end 2018 on a six-game trip to New York (Sept. 25-27) and Philadelphia (Sept. 28-30). The last homestand will feature 10 games against the Nationals, Cardinals and Phillies from Sept. 14-23.
The Braves will make season tickets available Sept. 15 through Nov. 3. Times and dates for the 2018 games will be released in the offseason. The schedule can be found in a downloadable format on the Braves' website.
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