Major League Baseball announced its preliminary 2019 regular season schedule Wednesday.
The Braves moved home start times to 7:20 p.m. for evening games and 1:20 p.m. for Sunday games in their third season at SunTrust Park.
They’ll open the season March 28 in Philadelphia. It marks the earliest opening day in MLB history and the second consecutive season the Braves and Phillies, who are currently batting it out for the National League East title, will meet in the season opener.
“When we opened SunTrust Park we wanted to do everything we could to ensure that fans coming to our games would have an easy time getting here,” Derek Schiller, Braves president and CEO, said in a statement. “Now that we have almost two seasons under our belts and have observed the flow around the ballpark, we feel comfortable moving start times up.”
After facing the Phillies, the Braves’ home opener is April 1 against the Cubs. Unlike years past, the early portion of their schedule is home-heavy: 13 of their first 19 are in Atlanta.
The Braves’ first multi-city trip comes three weeks into the season when they trek Cleveland and Cincinnati on April 19-25. They travel to Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco in May.
Interleague play features the American League Central and Toronto. The Braves will travel to Minnesota, Cleveland, Kansas City, Toronto and Detroit. They won’t travel to the South Side to face the White Sox, but will welcome them to SunTrust Park on Aug. 30-Sept. 1.
The Braves have just two three-city road trips. They do Miami-Los Angeles-Phoenix in early May, then Washington-Chicago-New York in late June.
Their home slate concludes with a six-game stand against the Phillies and Giants from Sept. 17-22. They end the year with two in Kansas City and three in New York from Sept. 24-29.
A final schedule, that will include times for road games and a promotional schedule, will be released in the offseason.
