The boys are back in town.

With opening night on Friday, the Lehigh Valley IronPigs have a couple days to get acclimated, or in most of their cases, reacclimated to the surroundings at Coca-Cola Park.

The Worcester Red Sox are the first team in and will spend Easter weekend in Allentown.

Manager Anthony Contreras will be at the helm for his third season with Joe Thurston returning as the team’s hitting coach.

This season, Lehigh Valley will have two pitching coaches in Ryan Buchter and Tyler Higgins. Buchter was the team’s assistant pitching coach and bullpen coach last season, while Higgins is in his first season as a coach after a 12-year playing career that included a stint in Japan. Chris Adamson takes over as bench coach for Contreras after serving in that role last season with Jersey Shore.

“I’ve gotten to feel at home here in Allentown. I know where to go and where to eat and I know where not to go,” said Contreras of his third season in the city. “I’ve ventured out a little bit more and I have my spots. I can tell you, I’m from the west coast, but I think the east coast has way better food than the west coast.”

The roster has seven players who come into the season 30 years or older and for a few of those players, this season could be a big moment in their careers.

Players like Darrick Hall and Weston Wilson have gotten a taste of the majors and may had figured to be playing in Philadelphia this season but are instead back in the Lehigh Valley. Wilson set a franchise record with 31 home runs last season and made his major league debut with the Phillies. Coming into camp he did not have a roster spot wrapped up with the Phillies, but seemed to have a leg up on making his first opening day roster.

“I’ve dealt with a lot of adversity in my career, being told things I don’t want to hear and things that maybe don’t make sense to me,” said Wilson. “My assignment is to come down to Triple-A and do what I can here and help the team win. I’m going to try to put up good numbers and basically, I’m just going to treat it like that. I have to be deserving of another opportunity in the major leagues.”

For Hall, the problem has been trying to make the most of opportunities that have presented themselves. He has put up big minor league numbers, and it looked like he would be the Phillies first baseman when Rhys Hoskins went down with a knee injury last spring. Unfortunately, Hall went down with a thumb injury a few days later and missed considerable time after needing surgery to repair the injury. During the offseason, Hall again appeared to have an opening when Hoskins left as a free agent, only to have Bryce Harper step into the first base job. Normally, that might have been difficult to digest, but Hall took a different approach over the winter and avoided baseball. Instead of jumping from the season right into training and keeping busy in the batting cage, Hall did the basics to keep himself in shape, but instead, focused on simply healing physically.

“I didn’t have the spring that I wanted, probably because I didn’t start hitting until about a month before spring training started, but that’s starting to come around now,” admitted Hall. “I feel like if you play, there is always a job somewhere, right? It didn’t happen the way I wanted it to happen, but that doesn’t stop me. We have a job ahead of us and we have to get things done.”

It will be interesting to follow Hall’s season because he says he feels better physically than he has in a long time.

Two other players who are true veterans of both the major and minor leagues are back at Triple-A to start the season. Scott Kingery had superstar written all over him, and the Phillies treated him as such with a lucrative contract before he even reached the majors. That deal turned out to not work well for the Phillies, and Kingery has spent most of his career toiling away in the minors, but the 29-year-old still has not given up and is hoping that maybe this will be the year that things change.

“When I go on the field, I know that I am going out there to play as well as I can, and be as consistent as I can and let the rest take care of itself. This team is made up of so many guys who have service time, so there are a lot of options for spots on this team, and you never know what’s going to happen,” said Kingery. “Towards the trade deadline or whatever, there are always things that could be shifting around.”

Since being drafted by the Phillies in the seventh round of the 2010 Draft, David Buchanan has worked his way up through the organization, made 35 major league starts and then played in both Japan and Korea before winding up back at Lehigh Valley where he first pitched in 2013. The experience overseas was great, and Buchanan loved it, but he would still like to get back to the majors and is restarting that journey with the IronPigs, serving as the team’s elder statesman as a 34-year-old.

“My family and I had a great time, and the culture was amazing. We had a really nice life there. I have to say though that it’s nice to come back and compete in the United States again,” said Buchanan. “For me, my work ethic and working out is still a top priority of mine. The mental aspect of it is different, my priorities have changed, and my focus has changed. It’s become a lot simpler for me as far as what I’m trying to do on the mound.”