Spring Training is imminent, Opening Day is within sight and the big league season isn't complete for fans without a subscription to MLB.TV. The most comprehensive streaming service in professional sports is now available for the 2019 season.

When the Braves open Spring Training next week, their bid to defend their National League East crown will be significantly influenced by whether Josh Donaldson is capable of reestablishing himself as one of baseball's elite superstars.

Fans and analysts spend the entire offseason speculating where the top free agents could go, but sometimes an under-the-radar pickup can end up making a world of difference. As positional competitions begin to heat up at Spring Training camps this month, MLB.com's beat writers were asked to identify one potentially overlooked acquisition for each of the 30 clubs. Here's who they came up with.

At some point over the next six weeks, injuries, improvement or regression will inevitably alter the plan nearly every Major League club brings into Spring Training. The Braves must decide exactly how to round out their rotation and bullpen, but for now it looks like they won't have any position-player battles. Here's the first prediction of how Atlanta's Opening Day roster might look.

All 30 Major League teams will wear special "MLB 150" patches on their uniforms for the entire 2019 season in honor of the 150th anniversary of the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first openly all-salaried professional baseball team.

Here are the top players in each league who could get the opportunity to show what they can do at the highest level this year, perhaps even contending for Rookie of the Year honors

Those hoping to watch Ronald Acuna Jr. extend last season's incredible post-All-Star break production should remember that his pace would have equated to 45 homers and 33 stolen bases over 162 games.

The 30 prospects below all are getting very long looks this spring with an eye toward breaking camp with the parent club. Even if they start the year in the Minors, they all should get the chance to contribute at some point in the very near future.

We're reluctant to finalize our list of offseason winners because, as you may have heard, there are some prominent unsigned free agents. Not just Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, either.

It didn't come as a surprise to anyone when Dana Brown left the Blue Jays as a special assistant to general manager Ross Atkins to join the Braves as vice president of scouting.

Here is a look at 10 Braves players sure to draw attention during this year's Spring Training.

Brian McCann still laughs about what transpired as he learned the Braves were calling him up to the Majors during the 2005 season. He remembers being summoned to Brian Snitker's room, where he found the then Double-A manager eating pizza while wearing nothing more than his underwear.

As the Braves open camp, they'll provide a glimpse of how much they have progressed since claiming an unexpected division crown last year. Freddie Freeman, Ronald Acuna Jr. and Ozzie Albies will once again be in a lineup that has been enriched by the addition of Josh Donaldson, the former American League MVP Award winner who thus far arguably ranks as baseball's top free-agent signee.

When the Braves re-signed Nick Markakis in January, they began leaning toward putting Ender Inciarte in the leadoff spot and moving Ronald Acuna Jr. to the cleanup role. But manager Brian Snitker said Acuna may still get his wish to stay at the top of the lineup.

On this opening week of Spring Training, all 30 Major League teams have one thing in common: optimism. Here's an optimism cheat sheet for each of them.

Who do the Braves have in the pipeline? Get scouting reports, video, stats, projected ETAs and more for Atlanta's Top 30 Prospects on MLBPipeline.com's Prospect Watch.

The next five weeks will see lots of shuffling on Major League rosters. Here are the most intriguing positional battles on each of the 30 MLB clubs.

It could be argued that Ender Inciarte stands as the X-factor in regard to the Braves' bid to defend last year's National League East crown and experience a successful postseason.

Braves manager Brian Snitker joked that he could almost detect a smile as he shared a phone conversation with Nick Markakis after the stoic outfielder re-signed with the club in January. Snitker and others actually saw that smile on Tuesday morning, when Markakis reported to Spring Training to begin his fifth season with the Braves and attempt to push the club past the rebuild he positively enriched through his leadership.

Sean Newcomb entered last June as an All-Star candidate and exited the regular season wondering if he had done enough to earn a spot on Atlanta's postseason roster. The inconsistent nature of his first full Major League season enhances the difficulty of projecting how valuable he might be to the Braves from both an immediate and long-term perspective.

In outlining their plans to rebuild the Orioles following the least successful season in franchise history, new club officials routinely point to experience: They just did the same thing elsewhere.

The Orioles' restocked farm system might inject some excitement into the club's retooled roster.

Here's an early look at how the Orioles' 25-man roster could shape up on Opening Day.

All 30 Major League teams will wear special "MLB 150" patches on their uniforms for the entire 2019 season in honor of the 150th anniversary of the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first openly all-salaried professional baseball team.

The Orioles' crowded outfield mix gained another member on Monday when the team signed veteran Eric Young Jr. to a Minor League contract with an invitation to Spring Training.

Fans and analysts spend the entire offseason speculating where the top free agents could go, but sometimes an under-the-radar pickup can end up making a world of difference. As positional competitions begin to heat up at Spring Training camps this month, MLB.com's beat writers were asked to identify one potentially overlooked acquisition for each of the 30 clubs. Here's who they came up with.

Since the Rays debuted "the opener" last May, no fewer than eight teams have helped transform the concept from a fad into a mini-movement. Consider the Orioles a candidate to dive in next.

For Brandon Hyde, the days and weeks leading up to Tuesday were filled with phone calls to friends, to former colleagues, to mentors he's made across more than two decades in the game. A constant theme emerged from the ensuing chats: What, exactly, should Hyde expect from his first Spring Training as a big league manager?

As pitchers and catchers reported Tuesday to Ed Smith Stadium, it marked the end to an offseason of overhaul in Baltimore, and the dawn of a new era. The focus will shift even further, from the front office to the field, when the club's first full squad workouts commence on Monday.

A year ago, Danny Farquhar was not going to be in the middle of a spring storyline. That's going to change this spring as he tries to win a spot in the Yankees' bullpen

As we inch closer and closer to Opening Day, we'll continue to take a position-by-position look at the Orioles roster options and remaining questions. Now that pitchers and catchers have officially reported to Spring Training, now feels like a good time to take a look behind the plate, where the Orioles have a ton of options but no clear answer.

It may take the Orioles a little longer than expected to sift through their crowded catching situation. A club source confirmed that catcher Jesus Sucre is held up by visa issues in his native Venezuela and will report to camp late.

The 30 prospects below all are getting very long looks this spring with an eye toward breaking camp with the parent club. Even if they start the year in the Minors, they all should get the chance to contribute at some point in the very near future.

With more than a dozen pitchers seemingly in the mix for bullpen jobs this spring, it'll take weeks of assessment before candidates for certain roles begin to emerge. Even the club's few veteran holdovers will have to wait. That includes Mychal Givens, who finished 2018 as the Orioles' closer and arrived at camp the overwhelming favorite to reclaim that job.

Everyone hopes for health this early in spring. But few more than Nate Karns, who has trudged a longer road back than any player in Orioles camp.

Wave him bye bye. A legendary voice of Orioles baseball is calling it a career. Joe Angel, beloved play-by-plan man and voice of the Orioles' radio broadcasts for nearly two decades, announced his retirement this week. The decision caps a 41-year career in the booth for Angel, 71, a fixture for 19 seasons across two stints in Baltimore.

Looking to preempt questions about his work ethic in a nightmare 2018 season, Chris Davis reported to Spring Training in Florida more than a week before Orioles position players were required to. That's when his efforts to rebound hit their first minor snag.

The Orioles' cloudy infield picture gained some clarity Saturday when the team signed veteran shortstop Alcides Escobar to a Minor League contract with an invitation to Spring Training.

A lot has to go right for Yusniel Diaz to crack the Orioles' Opening Day roster. But the Orioles' No.1 prospect per MLB Pipeline isn't letting that impede his plans to compete for a spot anyway.

On this opening week of Spring Training, all 30 Major League teams have one thing in common: optimism. Here's an optimism cheat sheet for each of them.

Like so many pitchers in Major League camps, Orioles hurlers have extra sets of eyes on them this spring. The Edgertronic cameras, perched on tripods, are set about a stride's length beyond the backfield bullpen mounds at the club's Ed Smith Stadium complex, as conspicuous as the coaches standing cross-armed behind them.

Who do the Orioles have in the pipeline? Get scouting reports, video, stats, projected ETAs and more for Baltimore's Top 30 Prospects on MLBPipeline.com's Prospect Watch.

The next five weeks will see lots of shuffling on Major League rosters. Here are the most intriguing positional battles on each of the 30 MLB clubs.

The Orioles began a long-overdue rebuild in July, when the club dealt many of its more-valued big assets in exchange for prospects.

In holding their first full-squad workout on Monday, the Orioles ushered in the first official phase of a spring set to surprise. Fresh faces flood Ed Smith Stadium. Questions litter the roster. Battles abound at nearly every position.

Taking reps behind Chris Davis at first base, Orioles prospect Ryan Mountcastle became the most high-profile participant yet in the club's grand spring experiment.

Pitch clocks are set to make their Spring Training debuts this week, and it will be in games featuring hordes of players for whom playing on a timer is nothing new.

The ability to switch fuels for oxidation in response to changes in macronutrient composition of diet (metabolic flexibility) may be informative of individuals’ susceptibility to weight gain. Seventy-nine healthy, weight-stable participants underwent 24-h assessments of energy expenditure and respiratory quotient (RQ) in a whole-room calorimeter during energy balance (EBL) (50% carbohydrate, 30% fat) and then during 24-h fasting and three 200% overfeeding diets in a crossover design. Metabolic flexibility was defined as the change in 24-h RQ from EBL during fasting and standard overfeeding (STOF) (50% carbohydrate, 30% fat), high-fat overfeeding (HFOF) (60% fat, 20% carbohydrate), and high-carbohydrate overfeeding (HCOF) (75% carbohydrate, 5% fat) diets. Free-living weight change was assessed after 6 and 12 months. Compared with EBL, RQ decreased on average by 9% during fasting and by 4% during HFOF but increased by 4% during STOF and by 8% during HCOF. A smaller decrease in RQ, reflecting a smaller increase in lipid oxidation rate, during HFOF but not during the other diets predicted greater weight gain at both 6 and 12 months. An impaired metabolic flexibility to acute HFOF can identify individuals prone to weight gain, indicating that an individual’s capacity to oxidize dietary fat is a metabolic determinant of weight change.

The whitening and loss of brown adipose tissue (BAT) during obesity and aging promote metabolic disorders and related diseases. The imbalance of Ca²⁺ homeostasis accounts for the dysfunction and clearance of mitochondria during BAT whitening. Capsaicin, a dietary factor activating TRPV1, can inhibit obesity induced by high-fat diet (HFD), but whether capsaicin inhibits BAT loss and the underlying mechanism remain unclear. In this study, we determined that the inhibitory effects of capsaicin on HFD-induced obesity and BAT whitening were dependent on the participation of SIRT3, a critical mitochondrial deacetylase. SIRT3 also mediated all of the beneficial effects of capsaicin on alleviating reactive oxygen species generation, elevating mitochondrial activity, and restricting mitochondrial calcium overload induced by HFD. Mechanistically, SIRT3 inhibits mitochondrial calcium uniporter (MCU)-mediated mitochondrial calcium overload by reducing the H3K27ac level on the MCU promoter in an AMPK-dependent manner. In addition, HFD also inhibits AMPK activity to reduce SIRT3 expression, which could be reversed by capsaicin. Capsaicin intervention also inhibited aging-induced BAT whitening through this mechanism. In conclusion, this study emphasizes a critical role of the AMPK/SIRT3 pathway in the maintenance of BAT morphology and function and suggests that intervention in this pathway may be an effective target for preventing obesity- or age-related metabolic diseases.

Adipose tissue macrophages (ATMs) are involved in the development of insulin resistance in obesity. We have recently shown that myeloid cell–specific reduction of HMG-CoA reductase (Hmgcr^m–/m–), which is the rate-limiting enzyme in cholesterol biosynthesis, protects against atherosclerosis by inhibiting macrophage migration in mice. We hypothesized that ATMs are harder to accumulate in Hmgcr^m–/m– mice than in control Hmgcr^fl/fl mice in the setting of obesity. To test this hypothesis, we fed Hmgcr^m–/m– and Hmgcr^fl/fl mice a high-fat diet (HFD) for 24 weeks and compared plasma glucose metabolism as well as insulin signaling and histology between the two groups. Myeloid cell–specific reduction of Hmgcr improved glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity without altering body weight in the HFD-induced obese mice. The improvement was due to a decrease in the number of ATMs. The ATMs were reduced by decreased recruitment of macrophages as a result of their impaired chemotactic activity. These changes were associated with decreased expression of proinflammatory cytokines in adipose tissues. Myeloid cell–specific reduction of Hmgcr also attenuated hepatic steatosis. In conclusion, reducing myeloid HMGCR may be a promising strategy to improve insulin resistance and hepatic steatosis in obesity.