Chicago Cubs vs. San Francisco Giants preview, Friday 9/10, 1:20 CT

Today's roster move: Here

Friday notes...

• HAPP-ENINGS: Ian Happ, 24 games since August 13: .371/.404/.787 (33-for-89), seven doubles, 10 home runs, raised his season OPS from .599 to .730. In fact, he’s 5-for-12 with three home runs in three games so far this week. Keep that up and we’ll have another Cub winning NL Player of the Week.
• THE NEW GUY: Codi Heuer, 17 appearances as a Cub since being acquired in the Craig Kimbrel trade: 0.90 ERA, 0.800 WHIP, only one HR allowed in 20 innings.
• HOME RUN UPDATE: The Cubs have homered in 15 consecutive games, the longest active streak in the NL. This streak is two games short of matching the franchise record, 17 straight games from August 19 - September 5, 1998.
• STRIKEOUT UPDATE: The Cubs struck out eight times Wednesday, giving them 396 in 37 games since the selloff, an average of 10.7 per game. They have 1,390 for the season, most in MLB by 54 (the Marlins are second with 1,336). If they maintain the post-selloff average, they will break the franchise record (1,518, set in 2015) in the first game of the doubleheader September 24 vs. the Cardinals, and will break the MLB record (1,595, set by the 2019 Tigers) October 1 in St. Louis.

Here are today’s particulars.

Cubs lineup:

The Giants lineup was not available at posting time. Please check the BCB Twitter feed for the Giants lineup.

Also of interest for this series:

Kyle Hendricks, RHP vs. Dominic Leone, RHP

USA TODAY Sports

USA TODAY NETWORK

Kyle Hendricks... man, I wish I could figure out what’s wrong with him. His August ERA (7.81) was worse than April (7.64), though he allowed more homers in April. Then his first September start, last Saturday against the Pirates, was also awful, though the Cubs eventually won the game.

Kyle did have a good outing against the Giants June 6 in San Francisco, allowing three runs in 6⅓ innings. That was the only game the Cubs won in that series.

Here’s hoping he has a strong finish to 2021.

Statcast

The Giants are going with a bullpen game today. Dominic Leone is a reliever who's started for the Giants once this year. I wouldn't expect him to go more than an inning or two.

Statcast

Today’s game is on Marquee Sports Network. Here’s a list of providers currently carrying Marquee. It’s also being carried by MLB Network (outside the Cubs and Giants market territories).

Here is the complete MLB.com Mediacenter for today.

MLB.com Gameday

Baseball-reference.com 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 2021 Game Thread procedure will be a bit different than previous years. It will be similar to what we’ve used for Spring Training.

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, titled “Cubs vs. (Team) (Day of week/date) game threads.” It will contain every post related to that particular game, including the First Pitch Thread and the overflow thread, as well as the recap when it’s published. The recap will also live on the front page as a separate post.

You will also be able to find the preview, First Pitch Thread and the overflow thread in the box marked “Chicago Cubs Game Threads” at the bottom of the front page (you can also find them in this section link). The StoryStream for each game can also be found in that section.

The First Pitch thread will post at five minutes before game time, then an overflow thread at 90 minutes after the scheduled game time.

Discuss amongst yourselves.