The nine-packs of tickets the Cubs have been selling for the last few weeks have been joined by a new six-game pack, which will go on sale next Friday.

From the Cubs press release, here are details:

The Chicago Cubs today announced the sale of the Cubs 6-Game Pack, featuring tickets to Opening Day against the Washington Nationals, rivalry matchups with the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago White Sox, and rare visits to Wrigley Field by the Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers. Sales begin Friday, Feb. 17, at 10 a.m. CST on www.cubs.com/6packs.

The Cubs 6-Game Pack provides a choice of 10 different pre-selected, six-game plans, with each option headlined by some of the schedule’s most popular games. The Cubs 6-Game Pack is available in both the Budweiser Bleachers and reserved seating bowl of Wrigley Field. Prices start at just $112 before taxes and fees for a package in the Upper Deck Reserved Outfield section.

What this means for ticket sales in general is unknown, although it does imply that the nine-game packs might not be selling. The general single-game ticket sale will be on Friday, March 9. More on the six-packs at this link.

The Cubs announced their regular season television schedule today. As always, all 162 games will be on TV -- if you're younger than about 35, you won't remember the days when about 20 games a year weren't on TV anywhere. Now, you can get every game pretty much anywhere, unless you're in one of the Bud Selig Blackout Areas.

This year, unlike a few recent years in the past, Opening Day will be on WGN. That's good news. The usual eight games are on WCIU; some of those will wind up on ESPN as national telecasts, so you won't miss them if you're outside the Chicago area.

The breakdown of TV games is as follows:

WGN: 63
CSN: 80
WCIU: 8
Fox: 9
ESPN: 2

There are three TBD games; two possible ESPN dates that will be on WGN if not on ESPN, and one possible late-season Fox date that will be on WGN if not on Fox. For simplicity's sake I have listed the ESPN TBD's as ESPN above, and the Fox TBD as WGN above (since those seem the most likely outcomes of those TBD's). After the jump, the complete schedule.

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I know this news will crush many of you, who were Blake DeWitt fans. (Sarcasm intentional!)

According to MLB Trade Rumors -- the only source of this story, thus far -- the Cubs have designated The Franchise for assignment to make room for Adrian Cardenas, who was claimed on waivers from the Athletics today. Here's a link to the official Cubs news release on these moves.

I admit, I thought DeWitt could become a decent major league player. When the Cubs acquired him from the Dodgers in the Ted Lilly deal, DeWitt was only 24 and had posted decent numbers in the major leagues at age 22. He never progressed beyond that, and though he had occasional success as a bench player, he neither developed power, nor had much speed, nor played good enough defense to be used as a defensive replacement.

Cardenas is a middle infielder who hit .314/.374/.418 in 545 plate appearances for Triple-A Sacramento in 2011, though he did not get called up in September. I presume he'll get a shot at winning a middle infield backup job in spring training.

So long, Franchise. At least we'll never have to see him try to play the outfield for the Cubs again.

It's just 15 days until pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report for Mesa for spring training, and this post lists the entire roster that will be in camp, plus coaches (and retired numbers, so you can see the entire numerical progression) and spring training instructors (who are listed along with their regular season position in the organization). All the numbers from 1 to 68 are either issued to someone or retired (except 45 -- someone's apparently got a soft spot for Sean Marshall.

You will see a lot of familiar numbers being worn by unfamiliar players this spring, and later this season, just part of the upheaval going on in the organization, as well as other changes. For example: If you bought a No. 17 Matt Garza jersey last year -- better get ready to get a new one. And, one additional non-roster spring training invitation has been issued, to righthander Esmailin Caridad.

And while we're on the topic of Cubs uniform numbers, here's another shameless plug. If you don't yet have your copy of "Cubs By The Numbers", the book co-authored by me, BCBer kaseyi and Matt Silverman, you can order yours at this link.

After the jump, the complete numerical roster of the 2012 Cubs.

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The Theo Epstein/Jed Hoyer era in Chicago begins with the team avoiding any arbitration hearings. The last unsigned player was Matt Garza, and this tweet from his agent gives the scoop on Garza's deal:

The Cubs had offered $7.95 million and Garza had asked for $12.5 million; the midpoint of those was $10.225 million, so the settlement is somewhat less than that, although the unspecified "performance bonuses" could presumably make up the difference.

Just 15 days until pitchers and catchers report to Mesa to begin workouts.

For those of you who have been waiting for the Cubs to sign a Cuban player, it's happened, according to Jorge Ebro:

I confess I know little about Concepcion, who is just 18 years old, although he was highly sought-after. This makes it clear that Theo Epstein & Co. are serious about building an organization with a strong international presence.

Discuss, etc.

Thursday morning, Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts and his siblings, along with Carlos Marmol and Starlin Castro, announced the building of a baseball academy in the Dominican Republic.

It will be located in La Gina and at 50 acres, the Cubs' new baseball academy will be the largest property of any academy in the D.R. In addition to baseball training, the academy will house the players and serve as an educational center. It will be a year-round training facility for major league players (during the offseason) as well as minor league players. In addition to the Dominican Republic, the academy will serve players from many other countries, including Venezuela, Panama, Colombia, Brazil, Nicaragua, Aruba, Curacao and Mexico.

The academy is expected to be completed in approximately 12-18 months. La Gina is located approximately 15 minutes from the airport and 30 minutes from Santo Domingo.

The academy will feature four fields (including one turf field), four covered batting cages, eight bullpens, a weight room, a cafeteria and kitchen, two locker rooms, two meeting rooms, a large classroom that can be converted to four smaller classrooms plus a theater and video room.

The on-site dormitory will house up to 80 players and eight staff members.

The academy will also have an educational center equipped with classrooms and staff to teach English and Spanish to players and personnel. Players will also have an ability to earn their GED (high school equivalent). This center will place an emphasis on education, health and nutrition.

The Ricketts family is committed to helping the Dominican Republic. Their recent donation to the Institute for Latin American Concern (ILAC), a collaborative health care and educational organization in the Dominican Republic, helped fund a clinic whose goal is to reduce hypertension and diabetes in the D.R. This project will also create construction jobs during the building process and future jobs at the academy once the project is complete.

After the jump, more renderings of the academy.

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Spring training is just three weeks away -- Cubs pitchers and catchers will report on Feb. 18 -- and on Monday, the Cubs issued 21 non-roster invitations to spring training. Some of these have been posted here at BCB before, including Rodrigo Lopez, Matt Tolbert, Bobby Scales and Trever Miller, who was just issued the invitation today.

Here's the complete list:

Nine pitchers: righthanders Marco Carrillo, Manuel Corpas, Jay Jackson, Rodrigo Lopez, Trey McNutt, Blake Parker and Dae-Eun Rhee and lefthanders Trever Miller and Chris Rusin

Three catchers: Michael Brenly, Jason Jaramillo and Blake Lalli

Five infielders: Alfredo Amezaga, Edgar Gonzalez, Jonathan Mota, Bobby Scales and Matt Tolbert

Four outfielders: James Adduci, Jae-Hoon Ha, Brett Jackson and Joe Mather

Realistically, most of these players have very little chance of making the 25-man roster; most of them are in camp to provide players to spell the starters after the early innings of the first games of spring training, as well as to start split-squad games. Some of them will wind up filling out the roster at Iowa and be injury protection.

It will be worth watching Brett Jackson's performance in particular, as he is the best prospect on the list.