Here's how to watch and stream the Cincinnati Reds' Opening Day game against the San Francisco Giants.

Major League Baseball's biggest advantage over other professional sports leagues is its unparalleled history and sense of tradition. It has the clearest career milestones ranging from 3,000 hits to 500 home runs to 300 wins, each nice round number making it easy for baseball fans to identify the best to ever do it. The powers that be have spent considerable effort on speeding up the game over the years, resulting in polarizing shifts like the pitch clock or starting extra innings with a runner on second base. Concepts like launch angle have been around in a meaningful way since the great Ted Williams wrote the book "The Science of Hitting" in 1968, but the sheer volume of publicly available data points that can be found via Statcast is astonishing when one stops to think about it.

Buster Posey didn't make many moves over the offseason, repeatedly showing faith in the 40-man roster he inherited. Christian Koss had his contract purchased and was added to the roster, making it alongside Casey Schmitt, with Brett Wisely and Grant McCray getting optioned to Triple-A. Both Koss and Schmitt are right-handed hitters who bring defensive versatility, but Schmitt had a .924 OPS in the spring with plenty of power and Koss posted a .413 OBP.

Missing the final week in Arizona with a balky back didn't keep centerfielder Jung Hoo Lee off the Giants' Opening Day roster, but in somewhat of a surprise, infielder Christian Koss will be on the bench in Cincinnati instead of outfielder Grant McCray or infielder Brett Wisely. Veteran Sam Huff will open the season as the backup catcher and infielder Casey Schmitt, who is out of options, also made the 26-man roster the Giants released Wednesday night.

Giants legend and fan favorite Buster Posey is now running the team's baseball operations, but as the new season starts Thursday, he faces a challenging landscape where the defending World Champion bum Dodgers keep getting richer with superstar talent. It's crack-of-the-bat, smell-of-the-grass time of year again, as your San Francisco Giants open their 2025 season Thursday afternoon against the Cincinnati Reds at 1:10 pm. (Their home opener is not until Friday, April 4 against the Seattle Mariners.) And there's plenty of reasons to believe they'll be better than they were in the 2024 campaign, when they finished with a below-.500 record of 80-82, for last place in the NL West. A big reason for optimism is new president of baseball operations Buster Posey, who's replaced the now-fired analytics-minded Farhan Zaidi.

Cincinnati Reds outfielder Austin Hays was placed on the 10-day injured list with a left calf strain on Wednesday. The move is retroactive to March 24 and comes a day before the Reds open the season at home against the San Francisco Giants. “He had a scan today and it's a very low grade (strain)," manager Terry Francona said.

Not long into his first spring training as the Giants' new manager, Bob Melvin was mad. “No one's going to remember it, but we remember it right now, and every game you suit up for, you go out there to win,” Melvin fumed to reporters last February. There was no such issue this spring, which the Giants finished off under the Tuesday afternoon sun in the same fashion as most of their previous 30 exhibitions. Jordan Hicks pitched an efficient five-plus innings, Tyler Fitzgerald smacked a two-run homer and scored a run, and the Giants beat the Tigers, 4-3.

The San Francisco Giants enter their first season under Buster Posey and Zack Minasian's leadership fresh off back-to-back fourth-place finishes in the NL West. To have any chance of playing October baseball, they'll need a lot to fall in their favor. — The Diamondbacks took a hit by losing first baseman Christian Walker but responded by landing Corbin Burnes and acquiring first baseman Josh Naylor from the Guardians.

SAN FRANCISCO — By any objective measure, Logan Webb had a great year. He earned his first All-Star appearance . He, again, led the National League in innings. He finished sixth in the Cy Young Award voting, his third straight season receiving votes. His status as Opening Day starter was so secure, even with a rotation featuring Justin Verlander and Robbie Ray, that manager Bob Melvin didn't need to tell him that he'd start the Giants' first game. Webb wasn't dissatisfied by any means. But as a perpetual critic, he wasn't entirely happy either. He knows there's another level to reach, unafraid to say that a Cy Young Award is an object of his desire. Webb has never been above experimenting, and

Humm Baby! What a surprise!

For the 28th consecutive year, the New York Yankees lead Forbes’ annual survey of MLB franchise values,

The memories probably will come flooding back when Buster Posey steps foot in Great American Ball Park on Thursday. It was home to one of the great comebacks in postseason history, sparked by Hunter Pence's rousing speech in the visiting clubhouse. Posey's grand slam in Game 5 of the National League Division Series in 2012 capped the comeback, which led to a second title in three years. The problem this season for the Giants, now run by Posey, won't be imagining what they can do in a short series.

The memories probably will come flooding back when Buster Posey steps foot in Great American Ball Park on Thursday. It was home to one of the great comebacks in postseason history, sparked by Hunter Pence's rousing speech in the visiting clubhouse. Posey's grand slam in Game 5 of the National League Division Series in 2012 capped the comeback, which led to a second title in three years. The problem this season for the Giants, now run by Posey, won't be imagining what they can do in a short series.

The memories probably will come flooding back when Buster Posey steps foot in Great American Ball Park on Thursday. It was home to one of the great comebacks in postseason history, sparked by Hunter Pence's rousing speech in the visiting clubhouse. Posey's grand slam in Game 5 of the National League Division Series in 2012 capped the comeback, which led to a second title in three years. The problem this season for the Giants, now run by Posey, won't be imagining what they can do in a short series.

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By any objective measure, Logan Webb had a great year. Webb wasn't dissatisfied, by no means. Webb has never been above experimenting, and leading up to his seventh season there wasn't a single element of his game that was off limits in the pursuit of excellence.

By any objective measure, Logan Webb had a great year. Webb wasn't dissatisfied, by no means. Webb has never been above experimenting, and leading up to his seventh season there wasn't a single element of his game that was off limits in the pursuit of excellence.

Bold decisions to change Major League Baseball's longstanding rules quickened the pace of games and revived the popularity of stealing bases over the last few years. Last year, only four teams had their starters pitch at least 900 innings, led by Seattle with 942 2/3.