PHOENIX — Greetings from the press room at Camelback Ranch, the spring home of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Super Bowl has ended. The Kansas City Chiefs are inevitable. And baseball season is upon us.

The Athletic has you covered as spring training kicks off in Arizona and Florida. Let’s take some questions from subscribers about various issues across the sport.

Can the Yankees catch the Orioles this year? — Dennis and Emily W.

Sure!

And if you believe some of the leading projection systems, like PECOTA, it is the Orioles who need to catch the Yankees. Even the ZiPS system used by FanGraphs, which pegs Baltimore to win the American League East with 90 victories, places the Yankees tied for the next-most victories with Toronto at 88. It’s going to be a close race in the East, as always.

Baltimore appears to be a strong team in 2024. Last season, the Orioles went 30-16 in one-run games thanks to a strong bullpen and good luck in those games. There will probably be some regression in the bullpen, and the trade of Craig Kimbrel for injured closer Félix Bautista might not be the most seamless of exchanges. However, Jackson Holliday is the finest prospect in the sport, their young players are all a year older, and they recently recruited Corbin Burnes. It’s a decent club.

However, there’s a chance the Yankees are also very excellent. Their ability to succeed is largely dependent on Juan Soto and Aaron Judge’s health. The two should mash if they can stay on the field. Gerrit Cole

At this point, I have conceded the fact that this is probably Max Fried’s last year in a Braves uniform. He may want to stay in Atlanta, but general manager Alex Anthopoulos has a way of doing things in the front office, and that is to not pay heaping gobs of money to pitchers who are over 30 years old. Oh, he will bring in a guy with something to prove, but that guy usually is Charlie Morton or Chris Sale.

Fried is the Braves’ best big-game pitcher. He won Game 6 of the 2021 World Series. No matter what happens after this season, Fried will always be a legend for that in the heart of Braves Country. But with him having an injury-plagued possible penultimate season with the Braves, I think it serves him, Atlanta and really everybody involved, to just go out to the rubber every fifth day and freaking shove.

Doing so may price Fried out of Atlanta’s grasp and into the arms of his boyhood team in the Los Angeles Dodgers. However, if Fried being one of the six best pitchers in the game absolutely crushes it during his contract season, that might be enough to have him leaving Atlanta as a two-time World Series champion. The Braves are playing a dangerous game, but I can see it all working out in the end.

It would not shock me if Fried ended up having the best stat line of any Braves pitcher in the rotation.