The reasons to be pessimistic about the schedule we’re about to discuss playing out as intended are plain to see, due to the owners already planning on locking out the players when the collective bargaining agreement expires on December 1st. But taking the harder path of optimism, let’s hope it will all be OK for the sake of the excercise. In that scenario, we already have our spring training schedule. The Yankees will first take the field in spring training 2027 on February 19th—a date that falls
on a Friday—visiting the division rival Toronto Blue Jays in Dunedin.
The Yankees’ first home game in the Grapefruit League will take place on the second day of play, hosting the Atlanta Braves at George M. Steinbrenner Field. Interestingly, the Braves are also the first team the Yankees will play twice, visiting them the following week on the 24th. The team they will face the most often next spring is the Philadelphia Phillies, with five separate matchups against them, taking place on February 21st, 26th, and March 3rd, 10th, and 20th.
New York will play 10 days in a row through the end of February before their first offday, which comes on Monday, March 1st. Carrying on, the first split-squad doubleheader will be played right at the end of spring, on March 20th, hosting the Tigers and visiting the Phillies on the same day. Thereafter, they’ll only host the Rays before coming home to prepare for Opening Day 2027: March 25th against the Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium.
As a reminder of what could happen if the lockout plays out in a similar fashion as the previous labor snafu in the 2021-22 offseason, Major League Baseball announced on February 18, 2022 that spring training would be officially delayed. The players had been locked out since December 2, 2021, and they remained in limbo until the league and the union came to an agreement on March 10, 2022. MLB had already cancelled multiple weeks of spring training games at this point and said that the regular season would at minimum be delayed. Rather than continuing with what remained of the planned schedule, they hastily put another one together that also pushed Opening Day back a week. Those regular-season games were not lost; rather, they simply started the postseason a week later than expected, playing out the 162-game slate beforehand.
It’s a long time until March 2027, let alone the time in mid-February when pitchers and catchers usually report. We’ll see how this all plays out.
