Oakland A’s first spring workout begins Feb. 17

Spring training is officially just one week away.

The Oakland A’s will hold their first workout for pitchers and catchers on Feb. 17, the team announced Tuesday. The full squad will follow on Feb. 22.

If all goes according to plan, then the A’s will begin their Cactus League schedule on Feb. 27, with a road game against a Milwaukee Brewers split-squad at 12:10 p.m. PT. The next day the green and gold will play at their home park, Hohokam Stadium, against the Seattle Mariners. In all they A’s have 33 spring games ahead of them, including the annual Bay Bridge Series against the Giants in the Bay Area at the end of March. Click here for the full spring schedule.

Then the regular season begins, with Opening Day on April 1 against the Houston Astros at the Coliseum. Click here to see the full 2021 season schedule.

The rest of the league will get their spring workouts going either the same day as the A’s or the next day. Click here for a full list, which is definitely not worth your time to look at, though I recognize that warning is kind of daring you to click just to make sure. Why even bother including the link then, you ask? Thoroughness, I suppose. Because it exists.

Here’s a more interesting link instead: MLB Health and Safety Protocols for the 2021 season, which includes the steps that teams and players will follow to keep everyone as safe as possible from the coronavirus pandemic. It also includes some rule changes, but we’ll take a closer look at those in another post.

For now, the bottom line is that pitchers and catchers begin spring training in a week.