As Spring training ends for another year and the players get ready for the regular season, we again wonder what the whole point of it was? Each year we get excited about the prospect of baseball starting up again, and then get bored with the whole concept of watching exhibition games that don’t mean anything. The thing is, Spring Training is not really for the fans. Oh sure, we pay to see the games, and we get excited for the fact that baseball means an end to the cold weather (in theory), but in truth, Spring Training is more about the players getting ready to play ball and the teams taking a look at new prospects, then the fans getting anything truly “exciting”.

As a fan, you expect Spring Training to give you the first look at not only new prospects, but also players who were traded to different teams. It allows you to see how a player fits into an established team, and getting an inkling of whether your team will be contenders this year. Of course, the fact that the Yankees and Red Sox always seem to have sub .500 records in Spring Training also means that winning and losing games aren’t everything either.