MLB

The Toronto Blue Jays started off the 2015 campaign on a high note by winning their season-opening series against the New York Yankees. Toronto won the first and third games of the three-game series.

After a promising first series against the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Cincinnati Reds will look to establish significant territory in the NL Central standings. Their next 19 games will feature NL Central opponents, and 22 of their next 26 games in total. 

The San Francisco Giants are the defending World Series champions, but their title defense has taken some hits in the injury department at the start of the 2015 season. The latest setback involves first baseman Brandon Belt.

Continue for updates.

Belt Leaves Tuesday's Game

Tuesday, April 7

Nick Piecoro of AZCentral.com noted that Belt left Tuesday’s game against the Arizona Diamondbacks:

Baseball is back, and so is the long ball.

Twenty-seven different players hit 29 home runs throughout Major League Baseball on Opening Day 2015. The Boston Red Sox had two players, second baseman Dustin Pedroia and outfielder Hanley Ramirez, start the season off with a bang by clubbing two home runs each.

It's the most wonderful time of the year. Baseball is back.  

The Pittsburgh Pirates opened up their season on Monday with a 5-2 loss to their division rivals, the Cincinnati Reds, at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati.

Let's take a look at the three things you need to know following Monday's opener.  

Just when you thought it was safe to etch a team's 25-man roster in stone, along come the Atlanta Braves and San Diego Padres to make us start the process all over.

The two rebuilding clubs—one far more along in the process than the other—hooked up for their second blockbuster trade in four months, with the Braves sending All-Star closer Craig Kimbrel and embattled outfielder Melvin Upton to the Padres for a package of talent, including top pitching prospect Matt Wisler.

No other sport's first full slate of games can match Major League Baseball in the instant-overreaction department.

Fans and folks in and around the game love to alternatively extrapolate on performances ("After his two-steal effort, Jose Iglesias is now on pace for 324 steals") as well as read far too much into what it all means after but one of 162 games.

The second full day of the MLB season doesn't exactly have the same luster as Opening Day. Half of the franchises are 0-1, while the other half are undefeated. It does mean that daily fantasy owners already have a better perspective on which stars to choose.

LOS ANGELES — Sorry. These are probably a couple of days late.

Why? Because the Padres just made another trade! When will they stop? Finally, Monday morning at 11, in the Dodger Stadium visitors' dugout, I asked San Diego manager Bud Black about the Opening Day lineup he had just written, and whether he felt good that that would be the lineup that would actually take the field in just over two hours.

The beginning of April means millions of fans tune in for MLB Opening Day 2015, but what did we learn from the first day of meaningful baseball?