The Cleveland Guardians play baseball today

Folks, we made it.

Today is the day that the Guardians baseballers of Cleveland will play their first game of the 2023 spring training season, at 3:05 p.m. ET against the Reds. There’s even a lineup!

Soak it all in and enjoy the moment. Just don’t take too long to soak, because the pitch clock is here and it isn’t screwing around.

Yes, Friday’s batch of spring training games gave us our first look at the pitch clock at the MLB level, and it’s clear there will be an adjustment period. Manny Machado received the league’s first violation, starting an at-bat 0-1 because he took too long to get ready at the plate.

The Padres broadcast showed a giant clock on-screen, which I can only hope is a temporary thing. I’m all for the pitch clock and speeding up the tempo, but I don’t want to always have an eye on the clock — whether I want to or not — during a baseball game. Thankfully the other game broadcast yesterday, NESN, didn’t have the clock on the screen anywhere.

Overall, we’ll hem and haw a bit, it’ll be all broadcasters talk about for a solid month, then it’ll just fade into the background and we’ll get snappier ballgames without much else changing. Seems good.

Cleveland Guardians news

Straw looks to boost elite defense, speed | MLB
MLB.com interviews keep rolling in, this time with the Guardians’ defensive wizard Myles Straw. One fun note — last year, up to three fielders were allowed to use PitchCom to know what pitches were coming and Straw opted not to use it. And he still finished as one of the best, if not the best, defenders in baseball.

Shane Bieber AMA | Reddit
Shane Bieber took to Reddit for an AMA (ask me anything), and well, these are never particularly insightful. But we did learn what Shane liked to order at his local places during his time at UCSB. He also thinks he would win a Hunger Games-style competition with his teammates. AMA’s get weird sometimes.

Guardians’ Shane Bieber is Shane Bieber again thanks to his 2022 performance | Cleveland

“We need to be careful not to fall into the trap after we exceeded the expectations people had on us last year,” said Bieber. “We had a decent year, but we can’t focus on that. We have to focus on what’s in front of us.”

Around the league

• The Pirates haven’t made any more offers to Bryan Reynolds.
• Ozzie Albies had shoulder surgery in the offseason.
• Masataka Yoshida on his first MLB experience.
• CBS Sports’ top 50 prospects for 2023.
• Xander Bogaerts wasn’t impressed with the Red Sox’s offer.
• Two Guards made the list of FanGraphs’ hitter sleeper candidates.