Chicago Cubs vs. Philadelphia Phillies preview, Friday 8/25, 6:05 CT

As a reminder, here are (most of) the nickname jerseys Cubs players will be wearing this weekend:

Willson Contreras and Jon Lester, listed above, are on the DL and won’t be participating in this weekend’s games. Felix Pena will be “RICARDON.” According to this Mets tweet, Rene Rivera was scheduled to be wearing “MONCHO” before the Cubs acquired him and he’ll be wearing that with his Cubs No. 7 jersey. Justin Wilson will be wearing “BRENNAN,” as he and former Tigers teammate Alex Wilson had agreed to wear “DALE” and “BRENNAN” after the movie “Step Brothers,” since they share a last name.

Wade Davis, who doesn’t appear in the image above, will be “WADER,” and Alex Avila is “PARKMAN.” (Davis’ is obvious; Avila’s will require an explanation which I don’t have.)

Ben Zobrist also doesn’t appear above, but you can see his nickname in the lineup tweet below.

Here are today’s particulars.

Cubs lineup:

Zobrist 2B, Schwarber LF, Bryant 3B, Rizzo 1B, Happ CF, Avila C, Heyward RF, Baez SS, Quintana P

Phillies lineup:

Hernandez 2B, Galvis SS, Williams RF, Hoskins LF, Joseph 1B, Franco 3B, Florimon CF, Alfaro C, Eickhoff P

Here’s how the Phillies sent out their lineup:

So I had to sit down with this:

And then this handy list of N.L. nicknames in order to figure out who those guys were.

Oh, and to the Phillies social media folks: Please, please don’t send out your lineup via a video. No one wants to sit through a video just to find out who’s playing tonight. Just an image, like the Cubs’ cool scoreboard image they use for lineups, is sufficient. The Phillies aren’t the only team who does this. And I’ve seen others where they use photos of the players with positions for a lineup tweet. If you’re not familiar with the team, good luck figuring that one out.

That out of the way, onward to tonight’s starting pitchers.

Jose Quintana vs. Jerad Eickhoff

Jose Quintana has not faced the Phillies since 2013 and none of those players are still on the team. Only three current Phillies (Pedro Florimon, Ty Kelly, Daniel Nava) have ever faced him.

So that’s less relevant than Quintana’s current numbers since he’s joined the Cubs. Of his seven starts, all but one can be categorized as at least “good.” He appears to be settling down and throwing the way he did prior to this year as a member of the White Sox. His K rate and BB rate as a Cub are both excellent.

I’d expect a good-to-excellent outing tonight.

Jerad Eickhoff faced the Cubs May 3 at Wrigley Field. He allowed five hits, two walks and four earned runs in 5⅔ innings. He’s had an up-and-down year but has been somewhat better since the middle of June. Current Cubs are hitting .220 (15-for-68) against him with two home runs (Alex Avila, Kyle Schwarber).

What I’ve always wondered about this guy is why his name is spelled “Jerad” when it’s pronounced as “Jared.”

Today's game is on WGN.

Here is the complete MLB.com Mediacenter for today.

MLB.com Gameday

Baseball-reference.com game preview

SB Nation game preview

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The 2017 Game Thread procedure will be the same as the one used during 2016. Here's how it works.

You'll find the game preview posted separately on the front page, two hours before game time (90 minutes for some early day games following night games).

At the same time, a StoryStream containing the preview will also post on the front page. The First Pitch Thread and all the overflow threads will be published in that stream, as well as the recap. The recap will also live on the front page as a separate post, and at the time I write the recap I will rename the stream "Cubs vs. (Team) (Day of Week) Game Threads" so you can go back and find every thread related to that particular game.

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The First Pitch thread will post at five minutes before game time, then an overflow thread at one hour, two hours and 2:45 after the scheduled game time.

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