Someone will walk away with an edge after the San Diego Padres and host San Francisco Giants meet for a seventh time already this season on Sunday afternoon.
Two teams, separated by just three games in the standings at the end of last season, have split their first six head-to-head meetings this year.
The Padres squared the season series when Jurickson Profar hit a grand slam and Michael King threw a shutout over seven innings in a 4-0 victory Saturday night.
The Giants won the series opener 3-2 Friday on Thairo Estrada’s walk-off double.
The split in San Francisco this weekend has resembled the 2-2 draw in San Diego last week in results only.
The clubs combined for 53 runs and 13 home runs in San Diego, with at least 10 runs scored in all four games. At the other extreme, the two games in San Francisco have featured a total of just nine runs and one homer, that being Profar’s decisive grand slam Saturday.
In starting 5-6, new Padres manager Mike Shildt notes his club has yet to pitch and hit well in the same game. Look out when it does happen, he warned.
“Clearly you’d like to have a couple more on the good side of the (win-loss) column. I’m confident that’s gonna happen,” he said. “But I do like the way we’re going about a lot of our business. We get the pitching rolling, things start to sync up, we’ll roll off some dubs in a row.”
A pair of winless right-handers — the Padres’ Matt Waldron (0-1, 9.00) and Giants’ Logan Webb (0-1, 6.52) — will attempt to continue the pitching-dominated trend in the series finale.
Waldron will make his second start of the season after allowing four runs and nine hits in four innings in a 6-2 home loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on Monday.
The 27-year-old has appeared in just nine games in his big league career, but two have been against the Giants, including the first six innings of a 5-2 win at San Francisco last September. He’s gone 0-0 with a 2.45 ERA against the Giants, also having seen them in relief in a 7-2 home loss last August.
A spot in the San Diego rotation opened for Waldron this season when reigning National League Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell signed with the Giants. Snell is scheduled to make his San Francisco debut Monday night at home against the Washington Nationals.
Giants manager Bob Melvin said the anticipation of Snell taking the mound could have a positive impact on his club on Sunday.
“Your team feels those things,” Melvin said of the addition of Snell. “We certainly did in spring training when we signed (Matt) Chapman. We felt it in the offseason when we signed (Jung Hoo) Lee and (Jordan) Hicks. They have effects that don’t necessarily show up in the box score, but the confidence in the team gets better. It inspires confidence.”
Leading into the Snell start will be former staff ace Webb, who pitched better against the Padres in the Giants’ season opener (two runs in six innings) on March 28 than he did Tuesday in Los Angeles, when he gave up all five runs in a 5-4 loss to the Dodgers.
He has gone 2-2 against the Padres in his career with a 2.54 ERA in 11 appearances (10 starts).
