Giants vs. Padres, 4/10

Yeah, these 6:45pm start times will do just fine, thank you very much. It actually feels like enough time has passed for there to be a day baseball game. In case you missed last night’s game, it was a good one in that the two new Giants hit the ball really hard, just as the numbers predicted, and Derek Holland looked fine after a shaky first inning and went on to strike out nine. The Giants even scored in the second inning!

They could try to score in the first inning today, but the harder thing to do just might be winning the game to clinch their first series win of the season.

Dereck Rodríguez didn’t look good in the early innings of his last start against the really good — the really, really, really good — Tampa Bay Rays, but managed to pitch into the sixth inning and struck out five without walking anybody. Last year, he seemed to weather storms pretty well — let’s see if that happens today against a tough Padres lineup:

Meanwhile, Nick Margevicius, whose name definitely looks like a random name generated by the computer in your MLB The Show or Baseball Mogul 2023 sim season, held the Giants in check in his Major League debut. He made the jump from Single-A to the majors, you know. His second start in St. Louis was equally great — just one hit allowed (a home run to Paul DeJong) in five innings, but also just one strikeout and one walk. He struck out five Giants in his debut and walked nobody.

Against this revamped Giants lineup, he might not have the same success:

Longoria looks absolutely lost at the plate after an encouraging opening series in San Diego, so seeing him fall a spot seems encouraging. Steven Duggar has actually not been all that great at the plate: 16 strikeouts against 1 walk. Kevin Pillar is not a leadoff hitter in any sense except the grizzled manager way of putting speedy outfielders in that position, but he’s a better option than Duggar right now.

Posey and Kratz in the same lineup means everybody else has to be able to hit home runs if either of those guys are to score should they get on base.