Cubs Minor League Daily: And We’re Back!

Did you miss the Daily? I know I missed the Daily. But after a very long winter’s nap, Minor League Baseball is back, and with it the return of daily minor league coverage on Bleacher Nation.

If you would like to watch some minor league games this season, then check out MiLB.TV. This is the minor league equivalent of MLB.TV, only with fewer games, lower quality video, not great audio, and a much lower price. The good news is that both Iowa and Tennessee have all their home games (and nearly all their road games) on video through this service. Daytona and Kane County do not. If either of those two ever do have their games broadcast this way while on the road, I will try to call it out it in advance.

Last year the radio feeds for all the minor league games were streamed for free through the team websites, and all the team websites are conveniently linked below. If you want listen to Baez and Soler in the Florida State League and wistfully long for their promotion to Double A so you can watch them as well, then just head on over to the Daytona page around game time.

That’s enough reminders for now. Let’s get to some baseball.

Scores From Yesterday

There were no games yesterday. If there had been, this is the place you would find a result, a link to the box score, and a link to each of the team websites. Since I don’t have any scores for you this morning, let’s set up the pitching assignments for the day instead.

Iowa – The Iowa Cubs have not yet announced their Opening Day starter. (UPDATE: It’s Chris Rusin.) They start the season in Albequerque at 8:35 ET.
Tennessee – Dallas Beeler takes the mound for Tennessee. The Smokies also open up on the road. Their game against Pensacola starts at 8:00 ET.
Daytona – Undersung pitching prospect Ben Wells starts things off for Daytona. The Cubs will be at home at 7:05 ET.
Kane County – Attendees of Opening Day in Kane County will get to see Pierce Johnson. Game time is 7:30 ET.

Performances of Note

• [All] No games means there are no performances to speak of yet. Starting tomorrow you’ll see a few of the highlights from each game noted here. I won’t try to cover everything. For a complete picture, just click on the box score that will be linked in the section above this.
• [All] See that set of square brackets with the word “All” in them at the beginning of each line? Those will tell you what team is covered in each note.
• [Kane County] For example, since this is a link back to Brett’s article on the Kane County opener, the brackets at the front read [Kane County]. That way, should you only really care about checking on one or two teams, you can find what you’re looking for easily.

Other News

• Sometimes there will be something to point out that does not fit into a Performance bullet, or would just take too much space to fit in that section. The “Other News” part of the Daily is the repository for all of those odds and ends.
• Since the minor league season has not quite started yet (hours away!), there is not a lot to talk about just now. But if you want to be as informed about the minor leagues and the Cubs’ prospects as possible this year, then maybe this would be an excellent time to take a glance back through the Bleacher Nation Top 40 and the Gauging the Depth series. Most of the prospects we’ll be talking about the most are included somewhere in those two sets of articles.
• And that’s all for now. One final programming note before I wrap up this Introduction to the Daily: weekends are changing. There will be no Minor League Daily on Saturday or Sunday this season. Instead, every Sunday we will bring you another Minor League feature – one that was frequently requested last year. The weekend games will be summed up in the Monday edition of the Daily. Hopefully I can pull that off without making the Monday edition too unmanageable long.
• Minor League baseball is finally here! Go Cubs, Smokies, Cubs, and Cougers (and eventually Hawks and Cubs)!