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Spring training baseball workouts start in metro Phoenix in less than 2 weeks

Looking across a baseball field
James Lotts/Cronkite News
Spring-training fans at Surprise Stadium on Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024.

There are less than two weeks until the first Major League Baseball players are scheduled to be in metro Phoenix for the start of spring training.

The Chicago Cubs are the first team set to hold workouts for pitchers and catchers at their Mesa facility.

Players for the rest of the Cactus League clubs are due in town soon after.

Games in the five-week exhibition season start on Feb. 20.

The Valley is the spring training home to 15 of the MLB's 30 teams. The other 15 teams play in Florida’s Grapefruit League.

There are 10 stadiums across metro Phoenix, from Hohokam Stadium in east Mesa to Surprise stadium in the far northwest Valley.

In 2024, 1,630,436 fans attened a total of 216 spring training games, and averaged of 7,548 fans per game. That was a 4% increase over 2023.

Fifteen teams have been training in Arizona's Cactus League since 2010, but there have been multiple teams in Arizona since 1947. According to Marshall Trimble, Arizona's state historian, the first team to train in Arizona was the Detroit Tigers in the late 1920s.
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Matthew Casey has won Edward R. Murrow awards for hard news and sports reporting since he joined KJZZ as a senior field correspondent in 2015.