Cubs vs. Mariners at Mesa preview, Sunday 3/1, 2:05 CT

Yu Darvish has been known for his large selection of pitches. He said he was using quite a few of them on Saturday:

“[Four-seam] fastball, cutter, hard cutter, slider, knuckle-curveball, two-seam [fastball],” Darvish said with a smile. “Yeah, six pitches.

“Just playing baseball. This is [my] first game, so I have to make sure my routine is right. That’s it.”

I think Darvish is primed for a huge year, continuing the dominance he had in the second half of 2019.

Also: Regular-season games will be played THIS MONTH!

Here are today’s particulars.

Cubs lineup:

Bryant 3B, Rizzo 1B, Baez SS, Heyward RF, Contreras C, Kipnis 2B, Almora CF, Descalso DH, Miller LF

Again, I’m pretty sure you will see at least the first six in this lineup on Opening Day in Milwaukee. (Not necessarily in that order past the top three.)

Mariners lineup:

Fraley RF, Crawford SS, Lewis DH, Vogelbach 1B, Nola C, Marmolejos LF, Wisdom 3B, Smith CF, Walton 2B

It’s a Daniel Vogelbach sighting!

Jon Lester will start for the Cubs, his second spring start. Cubs relievers scheduled today: Trevor Megill, Manuel Rodriguez, Kyle Ryan, Oscar De La Cruz, Wyatt Short and Caleb Simpson.

Almost-Cub Kendall Graveman will go for the Mariners. Also scheduled to throw for Seattle: Cody Anderson, Gerson Bautista, Yohan Ramirez, Carl Edwards Jr., Taylor Williams, Sam Delaplane and Aaron Fletcher.

Also of interest:

Today’s game is on the Marquee Network. Here is a complete channel guide for all the providers currently signed up with Marquee. Note that it is possible some of these channels might not be up and running right away. This is new to all of us and I would anticipate glitches. Hopefully it all gets squared away by Opening Day, including Marquee deals with Comcast and YouTube TV, among others.

Radio today: 670 The Score in the Chicago area and online. Also, 710 ESPN with the Mariners announcers. Available over-the-air in the Seattle area.

MLB.com Gameday

This game will be rebroadcast on MLB Network at 1 a.m. CT on Monday.

Please note that during spring training, Gameday doesn’t usually go pitch-by-pitch as it does during the regular season — usually, it will update after each at-bat.

Here is the complete MLB.com Mediacenter for today.

Please visit our SB Nation Mariners site Lookout Landing. If you do go there to interact with Mariners fans, please be respectful, abide by their individual site rules and serve as a good representation of Cub fans in general and BCB in particular.

For spring-training games, we’ll have a first-pitch thread at five minutes to game time and one overflow thread, 90 minutes after game time (because I know how you all like overflow threads!). For today, that will be 2 p.m. CT and 3:30 p.m. CT.

These threads will not post individually onto the front page; instead, you can find links to them in the box marked ”Chicago Cubs Game Threads” at the bottom of the front page. There will also be a StoryStream on the front page with all the game thread links, as well as the recap after the game is over. The pitcher boxes and regular-season stats will return on Opening Day.

Discuss amongst yourselves.