Chicago Cubs vs. San Francisco Giants preview, Wednesday 8/9, 2:45 CT

Happy 28th birthday, Jason Heyward! Yes, he’s exactly one day younger than his teammate Anthony Rizzo.

Rizzo, incidentally, gets today off:

Rizzo is actually having a good August so far: .344/.400/531, 11-for-32 with two home runs. But it can’t hurt to give him a day off.

Here are today’s particulars.

Cubs lineup:

Zobrist RF, Almora CF, Bryant 3B, Contreras 1B, Happ 2B, Baez SS, Schwarber LF, Avila C, Hendricks P

Giants lineup:

Span CF, Jones 1B, Parker LF, Posey C, Sandoval 3B, Pence RF, Crawford SS, Panik 2B, Bumgarner P

Kyle Hendricks vs. Madison Bumgarner

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Kyle Hendricks and Madison Bumgarner faced each other in one of the better pitchers’ duels of 2016, May 22 in San Francisco. Hendricks allowed just three hits and a run — driven in by Bumgarner — in 5⅓ innings. That was good, but Bumgarner was better, throwing 7⅔ shutout innings for a 1-0 win.

Both have spent time on the DL this year, for very different reasons. Since their returns:

Bumgarner, five starts, 32⅓ innings, 2.78 ERA, 1.021 WHIP, four home runs
Hendricks, three starts, 16⅓ innings, 2.76 ERA, 1.286 WHIP, two home runs

Looks pretty close to me, apart from Kyle’s somewhat higher WHIP. In his last outing Hendricks looked like he was getting close to last year’s form. Hopefully that keeps going this afternoon.

Today's game is on CSN Chicago. It’s also on MLB Network (outside the Chicago and San Francisco markets). MLBN’s broadcast will include this:

If any of you are watching the MLBN broadcast I’d love to hear from you in the recap thread as to how this went. Note that you will be watching the Giants broadcast if you are watching the game on MLBN.

Here is the complete MLB.com Mediacenter for today.

MLB.com Gameday

Baseball-reference.com game preview

SB Nation game preview

Please visit our SB Nation Giants site McCovey Chronicles. If you do go there to interact with Giants fans, please be respectful, abide by their individual site rules and serve as a good representation of Cub fans in general and BCB in particular.

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.

You will also be able to find the preview, First Pitch Thread, all the overflow threads and recap in the box marked "Chicago Cubs Game Threads" at the bottom of the front page (you can also find them in this section link). They will also appear in the game's StoryStream as noted above.

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.

Get tickets to Cubs games from our partner StubHub here.

Discuss amongst yourselves.