Welcome to the First Pitch Podcast, brought to you by Pitcherlist.com, your daily morning podcast, updating you on everything you need to know to win your fantasy baseball league.

Here's your host, Jake Crumpler.

What's up, fellow fantasy managers?

Welcome back to another episode of the First Pitch brought to you by pitcherlist.com.

My name is Jake Crumpler, and it's the weekend, so I'm back.

As always, I'll be taken over for Bubba as the host of the weekend editions of the podcast.

You can follow me at Jake Crumpler on Twitter and can find all of my work at crumplerbaseball.com.

Let's dive into everything baseball related from Friday, March 22nd.

I'll apologize right off the bat.

I'm currently recovering from a bout with COVID, so I apologize for any nasally sounding discussion coming from me.

But we'll start it off as always talking about the transactions,

injuries, news and notes from across spring training from Friday. Teams are currently finalizing

their opening day rosters right now. So we've got plenty of news regarding that. We'll start

off with Sunny Gray, whose return to the mound was delayed due to a

forecast of heavy rain. He is currently healing from a strained hamstring, and that delay means

Gray will begin the season on the injured list. He'll miss the first two turns through the

rotation, but he should return in mid-April. Zach Thompson will make the rotation as a result. Michael Lorenzen signed with the

Rangers and will be immediately thrust into the rotation. He likely needs some time to build up,

which means Cody Bradford should get a start or two to begin the year, but the club made it clear

they expect Lorenzen to take over at some point in April. The Tigers surprisingly optioned Matt Manning to the miners.

That means Casey Mize and Reese Olson will claim the final two spots in the Detroit rotation

to begin the year.

...