The San Francisco Giants were still licking their wounds after the pasting the New York Yankees gave them opening week and it seemed as though their division rival the San Diego Padres would extend the misery. Instead, the Giants took 2 out of 3 and left San Diego with the same 2-4 record as the Padres. But, from this point, the two teams diverged.
The Padres exploded for an 18-7 record in April while the Giants went 11-15. The surprise was less that the Giants underperformed and more that the Padres were
great. As I mentioned in the last preview:
It’s expected to be a down year for the Padres, right? The team’s finances are such that AJ Preller couldn’t make a big splash in free agency and years of huge trades has emptied their farm system. They scored just 7 runs in their opening series against the Tiges, tied for third with the Rockies and just behind the Diamondbacks, putting all four non-Dodger NL West teams in the bottom 5 of the sport in terms of runs scored. By wRC+, San Diego’s 66 puts them just outside that bottom 5 at 6th place. Sustainable for all these NL West teams? Probably not.
San Diego sold at a valuation of $3.9 billion not long after the series and that seemed to gas them up to competing with the Dodgers for the top of the NL West. Except there’s been one cute little storyline accompanying all that winning:
Fernando Tatis Jr. has not hit a home run this season.
He’s slashing .261/.333/.311 in 139 PA (32 G) with just 4 doubles and a triple. He is 9-for-11 in stolen base attempts and he’s playing his normally great defense in right field, but why has the power disappeared? Has he caught the Matt Chapman Virus? Not according to Statcast, which puts him in the 99th percentile of Hard Hit rate. According to MLB.com’s Thomas Harrigan, “While he has been hitting rockets, he hasn’t been producing contact that’s conducive to slugging, recording the lowest pull and fly-ball rates of his career.“ He warns, ”At some point, though, the dam is going to break.“ Could that be at Oracle Park, where he’s enjoyed a .908 OPS thanks to 10 home runs, and 9 doubles in 178 career plate appearances?
While the Padres and their fans hold their breaths, Giants fans will be holding theirs to see if the team’s #1 hitting prospect, Bryce Eldridge, can finally hit his first major league home run. At the end of Spring Training during the exhibition schedule, those willing to attend a game that didn’t count got a look at Eldridge’s opposite field power in Oracle:
He’s been called up along with Jesus Rodriguez to give the Giants a season-saving shot of talent. In a 10-game, 37-PA cup of jav at the end of last year, he was 3-for-28 with a pair of doubles. He’s been striking out in 30% of his plate appearances for Triple-A Sacramento, though, and those seem likelier to stick than the .900+ OPS he’s also sporting. Still, who will homer first this season: Fernando Tatis Jr. or Bryce Eldridge?
Series overview
Who: San Diego Padres (20-13) vs. San Francisco Giants (13-21)
Where: Oracle Park | San Francisco, California
When: Monday & Tuesday at 6:45pm PT, Wednesday at 12:45pm PT
National broadcasts: None.
Projected starters
Monday: Randy Vasquez (RHP 3-0, 2.94 ERA) vs. Trevor McDonald (RHP season debut)
Tuesday: Walker Buehler (RHP 1-2, 5.40 ERA) vs. TBD
Wednesday: Matt Waldron (RHP 0-1, 9.88 ERA) vs. TBD
Players to watch
Padres (besides Fernando Tatis Jr.)
Randy Vasquez: Is the 27-year old good and breaking out or has he just had a few good starts here in the early season? Last year, he posted a 3.84 ERA in 133.2 IP (26 starts) but with a 4.85 FIP and just a 5.3 K/9. Through his first 6 starts here in 2026, he’s at 2.94 in 33.2 IP (3.45 FIP) and a 9.1 K/9. His game log looks like this:
- Start 1: 6 IP 0 ER 3 BB 8 K
- Start 2: 6 IP 1 ER 1 BB 3 K
- Start 3: 5.2 IP 1 ER 0 BB 8 K
- Start 4: 4 IP 4 ER 4 BB 6K
- Start 5: 7 IP 0 ER 0 BB 5 K
- Start 6: 5 IP 5 ER 3 BB 4 K
He’s allowed just 1 run on the road — okay, admittedly, just 2 starts on the road, but they were in Boston (Start 2) and Colorado (Start 5).
Still, his Statcast page is unremarkable, bordering on poor. It’s when you look at the raw stuff that you see the upside: a 95 mph fastball (has both a four-seamer and sinker) and wicked spin on his cutter, curveball, slider, and sweeper. He also throws a changeup. The Giants lineup has a tough assignment ahead of them, as is often the case.
Miguel Andujar: Along with Xander Bogaerts (138 wRC+) and Manny Machado (112), Andujar (161) has really helped the Padres hit their way to victory over the past month or so. He has just a 2.9% walk rate against a 15.7% strikeout rate, but an impressive .209 Isolated Slugging percentage. His .389 batting average on balls in play suggests this is all pretty unsustainable, and maybe the Giants will pitch him into a cold streak, but for now, this utility guy is hitting the ball hard (41.5 Hard Hit%) and he’s doing it by pulling the ball in the air at an elite rate (23.1%).
Mason Miller: He’s not a “lights out” closer, he’s a soul devouring one. On top of all the strikeouts (32 in 16.1 IP), he’s got a 65.2% groundball rate. If he gets the ball at the end of the game, and you haven’t already done so, give the Giants the L.
Giants (besides Bryce Eldridge)
Matt Chapman: Is he, like Willy Adames, the ghost of the player we once knew? Did Chapman and Adames fall down an elevator shaft at the team hotel and what we’re seeing on the field now is merely their ghosts? What’s happened to Chappy? What’s happened to Willy? Their career-threatening slumps are getting a little silly.
Trevor McDonald: The only named starter for this series as of publication, it will be exciting to see if he can pickup where he left off at the end of last season as sort of the “hey, why didn’t the Giants stick him in the rotation sooner?” guy. He’ll be going against a strong lineup who might not be all that impressed with 93-94 and a big ol’ curveball.
Who will close: It couldn’t possibly be Ryan Walker at this point, which means Caleb Kilian, Erik Miller, and Keaton Winn are on closer watch.
Tony Vitello watch
You know, Hunter Wendlestedt’s jab at Director of Pitching Frank Anderson was a really sudden reminder that the top step of the dugout crew for the Giants is not respected around the league. Makes sense. That’s got to be earned. At the same time, the disrespect is compounded by all the losing. I don’t know if these Giants have any resiliency, but when Tony Vitello’s answer in the post-game presser goes like this:
“It all kind of got pretty hot pretty quick,” Vitello said. “I was trying to figure out, can we take a look at it and what can be done from there. I kind of blacked out, to be honest with you amongst all the extra riffraff after something about ‘rah-rah’ and ‘pom-poms,’ which I assume was something to do with either college or my behavior in the dugout.
I become concerned about focus and priorities. What’s coming across is that Vitello & co. are overwhelmed right now, likely in over their heads, and they’re (especially Vitello) lurching from feeling to feeling. The abject failure of the roster has to be making this all seem surreal or nightmarish, so I have some sympathy, but at this point, I think I only know Vitello by his visceral reaction to events or situations and not really anything about his philosophy on baseball or the players under his management. Am I going to learn any of that in this three game series? Probably not, but I’ll be on the lookout.
Prediction
The Giants won’t get swept, but it might feel like they did. Unless they win the series, in which case we’ll all be a little crabby about how they didn’t get a badly needed sweep.
