Today at 3:45 p.m. ET, the San Diego Padres (34-44) and San Francisco Giants (45-32) take the field at AT&T Park in San Francisco for the final leg of a three-game set. The game can be live streamed for free here. San Diego fans can hear all of the action on XPRS 1090 while San Francisco fans can do the same on KNBR 680.
San Diego hopes to return home with a sweep of a brief three-game road swing while San Francisco hopes to salvage the final game of this series before the Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals come into town. The Giants are in first place in the National League West but have lost eight of their last 10 while the Padres are in fourth place and 11.5 games behind their adversaries.
The Padres blanked the Giants 6-0 on Monday and followed up with a dominant 7-2 victory on Tuesday.
Ian Kennedy (5-8 3.90 ERA) toes the rubber for the Padres while the Giants counter with Tim Lincecum, who is 5-5 with a 4.90 ERA thus far. Kennedy ranks fourth in the National League with 103 strikeouts and third with 9.56 strikeouts per game. Lincecum threw his first career no-hitter against San Diego last July.
San Francisco hopes that its starting pitching will start to come around as it has struggled as of late.
"It's the rotation that put us in a good position, but we've hit a bump in the road with some of them, and that's going to happen," Giants manager Bruce Bochy said via MLB.com. "What's going to be important is that we come out of this, and it's going to be our starting pitching that gets us out of this."
The Padres will have third baseman Chase Headley back in the lineup after he sat out the last four games with a herniated disc in his back and received an epidural.
"He's feeling better," said manager Bud Black, according to MLB.com. "He got that injection and we think the shot helped. The four days off helped, too."
Headley is hitting just .201 with six homers and 23 RBI in 57 games this season.
Padres outfielder Seth Smith is tied for the team lead with 24 RBI and paces San Diego with a .294 batting average and eight homers.
Giants outfielder Hunter Pence ranks third in the NL in runs (56) and is tied for fourth in hits (91) while shortstop Brandon Crawford ranks second with seven stolen bases. Outfielder Michael Morse paces the team in homers (13) and RBI (44) while outfielder Angel Pagan is first among qualifiers on San Francisco with a .307 batting average, but he's missed eight games with a bad back.
Two NL West rivals close out their three-game set when the Padres and Giants clash at AT&T Park in San Francisco this afternoon.
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