By this time next week, we'll be staring at real baseball games (assuming COVID-19 doesn't again rear its ugly head and get in the way of our long-awaited reunion with the national pastime). So consider this your own version of the latter stages of spring training 2.0, where you reacquaint yourself with how to watch baseball games in preparation for next weekend's Orioles series in Fenway Park that kicks off the truncated 2020 campaign. Sometimes, the most important thing in a game happens...

Can you hold on for one more week? The long delay of the start of the 2020 season and the resulting longer-than-anticipated wait for the raising of the championship banner at Nationals Park make the 2019 season seem like a very distant memory of a much simpler time. But in just seven days, baseball finally, finally returns as the Yankees come to South Capitol Street to kick off the oddest season in the sport's long history. While we don't yet know exactly what baseball in the 2020s will be...

The Nationals can't do anything about the scarcity of exhibition games permitted by Major League Baseball - only three per team - before opening night, so they're left to try to get more creative in creating game-like situations for players during the rest of summer training. So far, the most they've done is hold informal, intrasquad games each afternoon. Most of these have lasted only four innings, with fairly lax rules. They'll start to get more serious this week, though, with a change...

The Orioles have certainly tried to build a better bullpen. Since the end of the 2019 season, they've added some new pitchers, and some holdovers have made changes that they hope will prove significant. Some talented young pitchers such as Hunter Harvey and Dillon Tate, who is injured currently, could be with the team for most of the 2020 season. O's pitching coach Doug Brocail presented Harvey as a closer option during a Zoom interview Sunday morning. No one is committing to the kid in that...

Max Scherzer threw 48 pitches over three innings on Wednesday. Stephen Strasburg and Erick Fedde followed Friday with three innings apiece. Patrick Corbin duplicated that feat Saturday afternoon. And today, Aníbal Sánchez topped everybody by totaling 65 pitches over four mostly sparkling innings in an intrasquad game at Nationals Park. It's impossible to know how any of that will translate to actual performance once the actual games begin late next week. But for now, the simple fact all...

Camp reductions aren't supposed to happen due to injury. The Orioles would prefer maintaining control of the process, but it keeps slipping from their grasp. Forty-five players in the pool are supposed to be competing for spots on the 30-man roster for opening day. The rest are headed to the alternate camp in Bowie, with the Orioles having the freedom to call upon them. They were counting on Anthony Santander and Dwight Smith Jr. being at Fenway Park for the opener, but the odds keep shrinking...

The utility competition in the Orioles' summer training camp no longer includes Richie Martin, who's been lost in an unexpected manner. Martin underwent X-rays yesterday afternoon that revealed a fractured bone in his right wrist, an injury that occurred after he collided with first baseman Chris Davis while diving back into the bag during Friday night's intrasquad game. The former Rule 5 pick held his left hand while walking off the field, the discomfort caused by a torn fingernail and...

Eric Thames has been playing first base almost exclusively in every Nationals simulated game this week. Before and after the simulated games, Thames is taking ground balls at first base, focusing on getting better on defense. Many believe Thames will be employed by Nationals manager Davey Martinez as the team's designated hitter, but the ultimate Nats lineup for 2020 would be having Thames and Howie Kendrick in the starting nine at the same time, with one at first base and one as the...

It's hard to believe the Nationals open the 2020 season in 11 days, but here we are. Barring a calamitous event - and, unfortunately, calamity must remain within the realm of possibility - Max Scherzer and company are going to take the field shortly after 7 p.m. on July 23 to face the Yankees and kick off this unprecedented baseball season. And there's a whole lot the Nats still need to figure out between now and then. Like who's going to make the opening night roster. Keep in mind, all...

Two starting pitchers in line to start the third game of the 2020 season matched up tonight during the Orioles' fourth intrasquad game at Camden Yards. Lefty Wade LeBlanc started for the home team wearing white while right-hander Kohl Stewart took the mound for the visitors in orange. LeBlanc threw a strong game with five scoreless innings and his squad won 3-0 in a six-inning game as Rio Ruiz hit a two-run homer and DJ Stewart, who had two hits, added an RBI double. LeBlanc gave up three hits...