It sure would be nice for the San Francisco Giants to get a win under their belt this week. Hopefully, that win happens in this series against the San Diego Padres. On the other hand, over the last four seasons, the Giants are just 10-19 at Petco Park. History is probably not a predictor of the present in the sports context, but talent usually is; in which case, it’s worth wondering if the Giants and Padres are that far apart on paper.
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. Plus, this series is a matchup of division rivals, so, expect a tough series.
Still, this is quite the series for remembering some guys.
The Padres, like the Giants, also had some pitching holes that needing patching in the offseason after losing Dylan Cease and Robert Suarez to free agency and Yu Darvish to injury, but San Diego went about it in a way that truly highlights their financial situation. Two of the three starters in this series are league minimum veterans who were picked up by San Diego just before Spring Training. Former Dodgers ace Walker Buehler and former Rockies ace German Marquez both have highlights and pedigree, but they are also emergency options. Will they flash former dominance or will the Giants be able to do damage against players who are essentially afterthoughts?
They also added some veteran hitters before Spring Training, picking up Nick Castellanos to DH after the Phillies released him, Miguel Andujar, and one-time All-Star Ty France.
Adding low-cost veteran players to the roster to serve as its depth is what the Angels do every year and it never really seems to work out for Perry Minasian. Will AJ Preller have better luck? His Padres are also being led by a rookie manager who has even less experience than Tony Vitello from an MLB coaching standpoint. The ceiling would seem to be very low.
Then again, they still have Fernando Tatis Jr. They still have Jackson Merrill. Manny Machado is off and running towards another .800+ OPS season (a career .305/.358/.520 in 483 PA vs. the Giants). Ramon Laureano, acquired at last year’s trade deadline, is off to a hot start. Their bullpen features Mason Miller’s 100+ mph fastball and, as usually, a bunch of fairly anonymous names who come in and get the job done.
I can’t believe I’m using this expression, but the Giants are looking to get off the schneid. They need a win, obviously, if only to halt the creeping dread created by another embarrassing homestand at Oracle Park. Rafael Devers seemed to live down to the national naysayers about his talent (and contract) with a lot of swing and miss in the strike zone; and, generally, it would be silly to say anything positive about a lineup that managed just 1 run in 27 innings at home. Logan Webb didn’t look so hot on top of Tony Vitello glitching out and leaving him in too long. The Padres are looking for a little validation too, though, and beating up on a team they’ve been able to handle might just give them the confidence they need to overcome their Los Angeles Angelsesque roster.
Series overview
Who: San Francisco Giants (0-3) at San Diego Padres (1-2)
Where: Petco Park | San Diego, California
When: Monday & Tuesday at 6:40pm PT, Wednesday at 1:10pm PT
National broadcasts: Monday (FS1)
Projected starters
Monday: Landen Roupp (season debut) vs. Walker Buehler (season debut)
Tuesday: Logan Webb (0-1, 10.80 ERA) vs. German Marquez (season debut)
Wednesday: Adrian Houser (season debut) vs. Nick Pivetta (0-1, 18.00 ERA)
Players to watch (besides Logan Webb & Manny Machado)
Padres
Gavin Sheets: Their starting first baseman is 0-for-8 to start the season. Last year, he hit 19 home runs and drove in 71 to go with a .746 OPS. In 21 games against the Giants, he’s 18-for-58 with a pair of homers, a triple, and 5 doubles to go with 17 RBI and 7 walks against 8 strikeouts. That’s a line of .310/.403/.534 in 67 PA. He’s 1-for-4 with a homer and 3 walks in 7 PA against Landen Roupp and 7-for-14 with 3 triples against Logan Webb.
Walker Buehler & German Marquez: They both could’ve been Giants in another life… before the team brought aboard two more investors and overcame all the “dead money” obligations that temporarily inflated their payroll. They’ll try to shake off their rough spring trainings (6.60 ERA for Buehler, 7.16 for Marquez) and reestablish themselves as reliable major league starters. They would not be the first players to use performances against the Giants as stepping stones to better things.
Adrian Morejon: Speaking of Spring Training stats (which don’t mean anything if they’re good and everything if they’re bad), the lefty reliever struck out 12 and walked just 1 in 8 IP. Last year, he had a 13-6 record out of the bullpen. He’s given up 6 runs in 26 career innings (19 G; 2.08 ERA) against the Giants while striking out 25 and walking 9.
Giants
Luis Arraez: The Giants’ second baseman will be facing his former team in a stadium where he has a career .294 batting average (139 G, 594 PA).
Jung Hoo Lee: He has a .297 average in 10 games at Petco along with a pair of home runs.
Keaton Winn: It would be really easy to say “Watch Ryan Walker every series,” because a lot of the Giants’ success this season (if that’s in the cards) is tied to how he performs; however, it’s going to take more than Walker to make this a formidable relief corps. The Giants have something in Caleb Kilian, but after that, it’s a rough draft. Winn has the stuff to become the third righty in the ‘pen and having Walker-Kilian-Winn as late inning relief options would shorten the game in a meaningful way.
Tony Vitello watch
Talent makes managing a whole lot easier, but as Tony Vitello demonstrated on Opening Night, that idea has a limit. Yes, Logan Webb is probably the best player on the roster — certainly, the best pitcher — but leaving him on the mound far longer than was warranted not only set back Webb (it’ll take a while to get that ERA down), but created a little doubt about the new manager’s confidence here in the early going. If there’s one area of the game where a manager does make a tangible impact beyond interpersonal relationships, it’s in managing the bullpen/making pitching changes. Beyond that, projecting confidence is one of those top-down behaviors that every successful organization demonstrates. The Giants were quiet and overmatched. A reflection of their manager right now?
This Padres matchup is a great test, because San Diego’s manager Craig Stammen is a brand new manager for 2026, too. He’s also an unconventional hire in that after the former reliever retired in 2023, he joined the Padres’ front office as an advisor before becoming the sixth manager hired by AJ Preller, San Diego’s President of Baseball Operations. He was a major league pitcher, though, which is more major league experience than Vitello had. He also picked up his first win this weekend.
Padres beat writer Dennis Lin wrote about Stammen’s path to the top step of the dugout and this bit stands out:
The modern game may be strengthening the case for pitchers as managers. The universal designated hitter effectively eliminated the double switch. The three-batter minimum simplified the bullpen chess that once demanded encyclopedic knowledge of platoon splits. Analytics script many in-game decisions before the first pitch is thrown. What managing means, more than ever, is handling people.
The “anyone can cook” vibes surrounding the manager position is probably another consequence of making the sport more “efficient” — as big data has the effect of cheapening the role — but Stammen and Vitello have the job, so they might as well take advantage of the opportunity. Admittedly, that might become tough to do if the losses really pile up.
Prediction time
Well, last time out, I said the Giants would avoid the sweep. They did not. However, I feel compelled to go with that again here because the alternative is an 0-6 start. Therefore, the Giants will notch their first win of the season.
