Ryan Back-ish, Streaming TV Status, Arrieta and Ross, and more Cubs balls

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THE BASEBALL IS BACK TODAY * !!!

* (Well, spring practice baseball. **)

** (Well, the Cubs haven’t yet. They’re playing tomorrow.)

• As the team photo suggests, Kyle Ryan is indeed now in camp with the Cubs. Jordan Bastian reports that he’s training with the team, but he’s still technically on the COVID roster (don’t know how it works, but glad he’s ready to go). When officially activated, the Cubs will have to redefine a 40-player roster, and they will also have to clear another for Ryan Tepera’s signing. I suspect Rowan Wick will hit the 60 day IL at some point to open one of these places, because if he doesn’t even launch yet (intercostal issue) then there is no way he be ready to pitch in the regular season. until the end of April at the earliest (at which point it would hit the 60 day mark anyway.

• I often get this question: Will YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV choose Marquee for the baseball season? The answer is always “who knows”. Both streaming services have chosen to drop virtually ALL regional sports networks after the baseball season, so what I suspect is that there will be pressure campaigns at the end of spring training for that the streamers take over the RSNs. Most of this will be led by Sinclair, who owns half of the MLB-linked RSNs (FOXs), and also has a minority stake in the Yankees ‘YES Network and the Cubs’ Branded Sports Network. So Sinclair will likely try to leverage that coverage to make a deal for all of these networks with the streamer who wants to achieve it. Will it work? Well, Hulu had Marquee last year, but YouTube didn’t. So we’ll see. We’ll also see if DISH finally chooses to add regional sports this year or not. For now, your only certainties about Marquee transport are the traditional cable providers, as well as DirecTV and AT&T (which will soon become a single entity).

• If you missed it, the spring training broadcast schedule for Marquee is here.

• Not that you would expect otherwise, but when asked about the second base competition, David Bote spent more time talking about Nico Hoerner and Ildemaro Vargas in a positive way than posing as the guy. He thinks it’s going to turn out the way it is, and these two guys are very good:

• It makes a lot of us smile:

• A small side benefit of having a manager who also spent a lot of time catching an active pitcher:

• It’s just different here:

• After my kerfuffle with floss-induced filling, I had a ton of people telling me I needed a water flosser (which is, apparently, exactly what it sounds like). Then I see today that this is one of the daily deals on Amazon. I guess I know what to do. #a d

• Can’t wait to see it, Bryan:

• That’s great, but we’ve also finished:



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