SAN FRANCISCO -- Two teams headed in opposite directions since they last met open a three-game series Monday night when the San Diego Padres take on the San Francisco Giants.
The clubs dueled in San Diego earlier this month, with the Padres taking three of four, including a 10-1 victory in the finale behind hotshot rookie Joey Lucchesi, who is not scheduled to pitch in this series.
The Padres have not won a series since, going 3-9 against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Arizona Diamondbacks, Colorado Rockies and New York Mets.
They were thumped by the visiting Mets 12-2 and 14-2 during the weekend after having opened that series with a win.
Left-hander Eric Lauer made his major-league debut in the aforementioned series against Colorado, and it did not go well.
The 22-year-old allowed seven runs in the first two innings at Coors Field, capped by a grand slam from Trevor Story in the second.
Lauer wound up going three innings, allowing seven runs (six earned) and six hits.
He has never faced the Giants and takes an 0-1 record with an 18.00 ERA into the game.
Lauer will match up with Jeff Samardzija, who has had more success in his career against the Padres than any other team. He's 8-3 with a 3.64 ERA in 16 games against San Diego, 14 of which he has started.
After having to delay his season debut because of a pectoral strain suffered late in spring training, Samardzija has started just twice for the Giants this month. The first, an 8-1 win over the Los Angeles Angels, went well; the second, a 15-2 loss to the Washington Nationals, did not.
Things have gone well for the Giants since Samardzija was promoted from the disabled list on April 20. They've won consecutive series against the Angels, Nationals and Dodgers, their first sequence of three straight series wins since last May.
Two-out hitting was the key to Sunday's 4-2 victory over the Dodgers.
The Giants scored in just two innings, and on both occasions Buster Posey came to the plate with two outs and nobody aboard.
Posey got on base both times, once with a walk and once with a double, and the Giants went on to score all four of their runs, three on Evan Longoria's first-inning home run.
The Giants had entered the game with the fewest runs scored in the National League with two outs (22).
Afterward, Giants manager Bruce Bochy gushed about the middle of his order, which now features four players with nine or more RBIs -- Longoria (15), Brandon Belt (14), Andrew McCutchen (11) and Posey (nine).
"It's always up to the heart of the order," he said. "That's what they get paid for. If they have their normal years, you're probably going to have a pretty good year."
Giants pitchers will have to deal with slugger Christian Villanueva in the heart of the Padres' order. He has homered twice in San Diego's last four games, raising his RBI total to 18.
Villanueva missed three games last week with a balky hamstring. On Saturday, he blasted his eighth homer of the season, and his seventh against lefties.
"Villa is annihilating left-handed pitching, over and over and over again," Padres manager Andy Green told the San Diego Union-Tribune after Saturday's 12-2 win. "And he's having better and better at-bats, for my taste, every time I see him play."
The third baseman had five hits, including two homers and five RBIs in the final three games of the earlier Giants-Padres series, with San Diego winning all three.
"I'm always looking to hit my pitch and that means basically where I do damage in the zone," Villanueva said. "I'm also looking to hit the pitch the pitcher makes a mistake on. I think it's always a fight just going back and forth in trying to work and fight to get that pitch."
Saturday's homer extended Villanueva's hitting streak to 11, but he went 0-for-4 on Sunday.
