The two worst teams in the NL West match up in a battle for the division cellar. It’s been a horrible fall this season for the San Francisco Giants who, on paper, still look like a much better team than the San Diego Padres despite sitting five games back in the standings. The Giants will host the Padres in a four-game series this weekend, hoping to make up some of that ground.
This series will be contested from Thursday, July 20, 2017 through Sunday, July 23, 2017 at AT&T Park in San Francisco.
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Pitching Matchups
One of the key reasons the Giants are likely the superior team despite the inferior record is starting on Thursday: Madison Bumgarner.
The veteran southpaw missed most of the season and the Giants’ rotation crumbled without its leader. He’ll be making his first home start since coming off the DL and looked solid—although a bit rusty—in his first road start back. He ultimately lasted seven innings while surrendering three runs. He threw 102 pitches in the effort so there shouldn’t be any pitch count restrictions on him going forward based on the injury.
Bumgarner is 0-3 in his five starts this season. That’s worth noting. While you can expect a good outing from the lefty, you cannot expect a win given how the rest of the team is playing.
Even so, there’s no doubt Bumgarner gives you the best chance. He’s pitched to a 2.91 ERA and 3.13 FIP over his career. He has a 4.31 career strikeout to walk ratio and a sub-1 career homer per nine inning ratio.
In his career against the Padres, Bumgarner is 10-8 with a 3.38 ERA and 1.069 WHIP in 30 appearances.
To counter the ace, the Padres will turn to their ace—or at least their Opening Day starter—in Jhoulys Chacin.
The right-hander 5-9 with a 4.75 ERA and 1.522 WHIP, but he has pitched to a 2.68 ERA since the beginning of June. Included in that is a quality start against this Giants team on Saturday. He did struggle with command early, tossing 58 pitches in two frames, but settled in nicely. San Fran will shoot to take advantage of early command issues in round two.
As the series progresses, we’ll see Trevor Cahill opposite of Jeff Samardzija on Friday.
Cahill held the Giants to a single run in 6.2 innings when the teams met last weekend in Petco and has looked good since coming off the DL. Overall, he’s pitched to a 3.14 ERA in 10 starts.
Samardzija has been an interesting case all year. He struggled in his start against the Padres last weekend, allowing seven runs. His ERA is up to 4.86. Despite that, his command has been impeccable—at least his ability to avoid walks has been. He’s been hit hard, however, allowing 20 homers and plenty of hits to make up for the 14 walks and 9.64 strikeout to walk ratio.
The veteran right-hander’s peripheral numbers are so much better than his ERA. His FIP is 3.52 and by all sabermetric accounts, he’s had a good season despite what the ERA may indicate.
The last two pitchers in this series for the Padres are Luis Perdomo, who gets the ball on Saturday, and Dinelson Lamet who will close out the series.
Just when Perdomo looked to be getting on a role, he goes just 2.1 innings, giving up seven runs to the Rockies in his last start. Before that, he had given up only nine runs over four starts.
The 24-year old right-hander has good stuff. He just needs to harness it better. He’s done just that in four starts at AT&T Park, pitching to a 2.81 ERA.
As for Lamet, he’s been a strikeout machine, but otherwise had trouble both with walks and homers in his first eight big league starts. He’s 3-3 with a 5.93 ERA, allowing 10 homers in 41 frames.
The Giants will turn to Matt Moore on Saturday. Ty Blach is scheduled to throw Sunday.
Moore has had a terrible year. He’s 3-10 with a 5.81 ERA, but he’s a bit better at home, going 2-6 with a 4.20 ERA.
Blach, on the other hand, has been the Giants most reliable starter all year despite the low strikeout numbers. He’s 6-5 with a 4.60 ERA. He’s thrown back-to-back quality starts, but has allowed at least five runs in three of his last six starts and seven in two of them.
Deadline Factors
With both the Giants and Padres pulling up the rear in the NL West, each figure to sell at the deadline and that could impact this series.
We’ve already seen big name players switch teams with Jose Quintana, Todd Frazier and Ryan Madson all changing teams, amongst others.
The Padres’ big piece is left-hander Brad Hand. Hand has stabilized an otherwise troublesome bullpen with a 2.25 ERA. He’s striking out 11.4 per nine innings and was the San Diego representative in the All-Star game. He has a sizeable market. Without Hand, the Padres’ bullpen takes a huge hit. Kirby Yates is throwing well and Ryan Buchter is a good arm, but Hand is the central figure.
The Giants have several players receiving interest including Jeff Samardzija and Hunter Strickland. Eduardo Nunez has drawn attention from the Red Sox, but he got banged up earlier this week.
Offensive Challenges
The Giants and Padres—along with the Phillies—pull up the rear in the NL standings. It seems logical that those three also fall at the bottom of the offensive charts per runs scored. The three are the last three teams in runs scored in all of baseball. The Giants rank No. 28; the Padres sit at No. 30.
Amongst these two offensively challenged teams, the Giants are the clearly better team based on average. They’re hitting .243 compared to .231. That said, the Padres have more power. San Diego has hit 111 homers to the Giants’ 77.
With pitching woes, the Padres can get lucky at the plate. Manny Margot, Wil Myers and Hector Sanchez all have good pop. The rest of the homer hitters are all on the DL.
Still, the Padres have more power than the Giants. Buster Posey and Brandon Belt are the team’s only real threats.
San Diego has six more runs and five more home runs in July than San Francisco.
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