Cubs vs. Padres at Mesa simulated game preview, Monday 3/23, 6 p.m. CT

Over the weekend, BCB’s Duane Pesice acquired his copy of MLB The Show 20, this year’s version of the game. This is what we’ll be using to simulate the 2020 season beginning this Thursday, when the Cubs were scheduled to face the Brewers in Milwaukee.

For now, we’re going to do one more practice game to see how it goes. Per the poll in the “recap” to the first simulated game, all of these simulated games will begin at 6 p.m. CT on weekdays, 3 p.m. CT on weekends, regardless of the time they were originally scheduled.

Today, the Cubs were scheduled to face the Padres at Sloan Park, so that will be the game simulated. Again, it will virtually take place at the generic spring training park we used last week.

Kyle Hendricks will start for the Cubs and Zach Davies will go for the Padres.

Here are the lineups we’ve chosen for today. For the Cubs’ opponent, I have tried to put together a fairly realistic spring training lineup.

Cubs:

Bryant 3B, Rizzo 1B, Baez SS, Contreras C, Bote 2B, Heyward RF, Souza LF, Almora CF, Hendricks P

Padres:

Tatis SS, Pham LF, Machado 3B, Hosmer 1B, Hedges C, Myers RF, Dozier 2B, Grisham CF, Davies P

Here is the complete BCB mediacenter for today (that is, the YouTube channel where all these games will be located). Note that this is for the full channel and NOT the link to the live game. We’ll have that direct link when the game simulation actually begins.

I think that’s it for the info you’ll need, except for the direct YouTube live link, which Duane will put in the comments to the game thread when it begins. For now, it’ll just be a single game thread. Today’s will post at 5:30 p.m. CT, about 30 minutes before we begin the simulation. Hope you enjoy these. If you have any questions, fire away in the comments.

Discuss amongst yourselves.