MESA, Ariz.—New Chicago Cubs manager David Ross wasted no time in making his first big decision, announcing Kris Bryant as his leadoff man even before playing a game.

“You’ll see him at the top of the order a whole lot in spring training,” Ross said Wednesday. “Kris Bryant is a really good at-bat, gets on base, is probably one of our best baserunners. His baseball IQ is extremely high. When you talk about putting the best players at the top of the order, I want to put him at the top.”’

Bryant is on board, having hit leadoff in college after teams stopped pitching to him in the middle of the University of San Diego order.

The Cubs ranked last in the majors in on-base percentage (.294) from the No. 1 spot last season, after ranking first in the National League in 2018. Ross intends to give Bryant, who has a career .385 OBP, a long leash.

The most important moment of the Super Bowl had nothing to do with football. When the game clock hit zero, baseball season began.

Sure, there’s plenty of time to get mad in March while watching college basketball, but nothing gets us through the final weeks of winter quite like the anticipation of baseball. We’ve got 10 big questions leading up to the 2020 season.

1. Will the Yankees run away with the AL East?
The Yankees signed Gerrit Cole at the winter meetings and immediately became World Series favorites. Giving $324 million to the best pitcher on the planet is the most Yankees way to fix their rotation, and their lineup should be as good, if not better than it was last season.

Still, the AL East isn’t an easy division to win. The Rays have mastered winning on a small budget and should be good again this year. The Blue Jays should be better in their second season of Vlad Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette and Cavan Biggio. And the Red Sox will still be a threat as long as they don’t trade Mookie Betts (more on that later).

It’s quite fitting Andy Green’s introduction to Cubs Nation came at the team’s annual fan festival this weekend.

Green, whom the Cubs officially hired as bench coach in December, grew up a Reds fan in his native Lexington, Ky. It wasn’t long before his allegiances changed to one of Cincinnati’s geographic neighbors, however.

“I went to [former Reds ballpark Riverfront Stadium] as a kid at like 5, 6, 7, first time I saw big-league baseball,” Green told NBC Sports Chicago on Saturday. “But my mom took me up to Wrigley at 12 or 13. I was like ‘This is big-league baseball.’

“I switched over allegiances that time as a Cubs fan, watched Ryne Sandberg — Mark Grace was somebody who jumped off the page to me at that point in time. It was late 80s, early 90s.”