BS Report: March 25, 2026
Well, a lot of the young whippersnappers in the 41 NBC newsroom occasionally like to chide me over my advanced age. And yes, I’ve been around a little bit, but that’s fine, because it allows you to have great memories of things that happened in the past, like growing up and watching baseball on NBC. There was nothing like those Saturday afternoons around 2:00, when you could turn it on NBC and find the game of the week with Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek and later, of course, Vin Scully joined Joe and Tony Kubek went to the number two team with Bob Costas.
Great memories of watching those games on Saturday afternoon. And of course, we really didn’t see very many American League teams. There was no interleague play back in the day. You got the Braves games off of channel 17 in Atlanta, and then, of course, on the superstation that went all over the country. But you had to really rely on the game of the week on NBC on Saturday afternoon, and then the game of the week on ABC on Monday night to watch those other teams that you were not able to see very often.
So it was always a treat to watch that game the week. And we are thrilled that baseball is back on NBC, and we’ll have two games for you on 41 and back tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon it’ll be the Pirates and the Mets, which should be a fun game. And then tomorrow night, the Dodgers, the world champion Dodgers and the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Braves, of course, will be on NBC at some point during the season. Speaking of those Braves, well, the roster is set. No real big surprise. Pretty much what we expected to have happen. It looks as of now that Jose Suarez is going to be the opening day fifth starter for this team, not on Opening Day, but the starter for the Opening day roster, of course, was Spencer Strider out? And with Schmeling back out and Waltrip and Wentz, everybody had to move up. And Suarez who had a good spring, is going to be the fifth starter at least to start the season. But remember this guy was placed on waivers by the Braves back in January, claimed by Baltimore. And then two weeks later, Baltimore put him back on waivers and the Braves claimed him and brought him back again.
So how good is this guy? Well, he had a good spring training, which is good to hear, but it is a question mark. And the Braves, when they start on Friday night in Atlanta against the Royals, will have 13 straight days of games, usually for the start of the season. There are some days off that are below ten as the team kind of unwinds and and gets going for the six month season, but the Braves have a 13 game stretch, so it’s going to be very, very difficult. And that means they’ll need another starting pitcher probably at some point in game 6 or 7. And they may bring up Martin Perez to put him on the roster for that assignment. The bullpen looks good, the lineup looks great. The offense was great in spring training. They scored more runs than anybody in either the Grapefruit League or the Cactus League.
They won more games than anybody in the Grapefruit League in the Cactus League, which is fine. That’s good. And of course, the Braves have a new manager that will take the field on Friday in Walt Weiss replacing Brian Snitker. So even though there’s a lot of questions and a lot of concern about that pitching staff and particularly the rotation, there is no question there should be a lot of excitement about the start of the Braves season on Friday night. And again, remember Thursday afternoon we’ll have the Pirates and the Mets, and then Thursday night the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks right here on 41NBC.
