MESA, Arizona — The Cubs ended their tie streak at three Saturday afternoon with a convincing 7-4 win over the Guardians. That gives them seven wins to go with the three ties, and they haven’t lost yet this spring.

Right. Spring wins and losses mean nothing. I know this. You know this. And yet… there’s just something that feels good about seeing the Chicago Cubs do this sort of thing, even when the games don’t mean anything.

We did see some things that did mean something Saturday afternoon, so let’s get to them.

The Cubs plated two in the first inning. Ian Happ led off with a double and one out later scored on this single by Seiya Suzuki [VIDEO].

Suzuki advanced to second on a walk by Dansby Swanson and scored on this single by Carson Kelly [VIDEO].

Two more Cubs runs crossed the plate in the second. Jon Berti and Jonathon Long walked, and one out later Happ walked to load the bases. After Kyle Tucker struck out, Suzuki came to the plate again [VIDEO].

Suzuki went 2-for-3 with three RBI and, for some reason, played center field. A first-inning double got past him, but otherwise he made two plays without incident.

In those first two innings, the Guardians used two pitchers in an odd little formation. Starter Joey Cantillo came out after Kelly’s single, replaced by Zane Morehouse. Then Cantillo came back to start the second. He left after Tucker’s K, and Morehouse gave up the single to Suzuki. All four runs in the first two innings were charged to Cantillo. Gotta love Spring Training rules.

While all this was going on, Colin Rea had a solid three-inning outing, allowing just the first-inning double and a pair of walks. Here’s one of his two strikeouts [VIDEO].

Rea seems a perfectly cromulent fifth starter, and that’s where I would expect him to start the season.

The Cubs added single runs in the fifth and sixth, the first on a sacrifice fly by Vidal Bruján, the second on an RBI single by Haydn McGeary after all the Cubs starters had left the game.

Cubs relievers had a nice game, until the eighth inning, and I’ll get to that in a moment. Julian Merryweather, Ryan Brasier and Caleb Thielbar threw three perfect innings, retiring all nine batters they faced, striking out four.

Then Brad Keller had a scoreless seventh with two strikeouts, allowing a hit, Cleveland’s first baserunner since the third.

That’s when silly season started. Craig Counsell clearly wanted Keller to finish the game, after Keller allowed two runs on a windblown triple and windblown homer. And when I say “windblown,” I’m not kidding. The wind was reported at 10 miles per hour at game time but by the eighth inning was likely gusting over 30.

This should have been a routine fly ball to left-center [VIDEO].

Instead, it went for a home run. Keller got touched up for another homer in the ninth and finally was removed with one out, and Cayne Ueckert finished up.

I don’t think you can blame Keller for all those runs — he got charged with all four Guardians runs. The wind was really to blame. I thought Keller threw reasonably well, and like his last outing, he was reaching the upper 90s (I saw 97 on the Sloan Park pitch speed meter). I still don’t think there’s room in the Cubs Opening Day bullpen for him. As always, we await developments.

Attendance watch: Saturday’s crowd at Sloan Park was 12,020. That makes the total for six home dates 73,341, or 12,224 per date.

There’s another game tonight that begins at 7:05 p.m. CT, a little less than 90 minutes after the time of this recap posting. The Cubs will face the Royals at Surprise. Since there’s no TV of this game, just a radio broadcast with the Royals broadcast team, I’m not going to post separate threads for discussion. Just use the comment section of this recap to discuss the night game, if you want to.

Here are the lineups for the night game.

Cubs:

Royals:

The rest of the pitchers for tonight are listed in this morning’s game preview. I’ll have a brief recap of tonight’s game at 8 a.m. CT tomorrow.

Sunday afternoon, the Cubs will face the Reds at Sloan Park. Matthew Boyd will start for the Cubs and Carson Spiers will start for Cincinnati. Game time Sunday is 2:05 p.m. CT and TV coverage will return, on Marquee Sports Network. There will also be a radio broadcast via WLW 700 in Cincinnati with the Reds radio team.