It got scary towards the end last night, but our Padres were able to hold on to the win to open up this series against our natural rivals in the Pacific Northwest. We will see if they can continue their offensive success and clinch the series tonight in game 2.

Jason Marquis will make his second Padres start tonight. In his Padres debut last Thursday, he gave up four runs (two earned) on nine hits. He walked just one and struck out six in his six innings of work and took the loss. He's hoping to get some of the same kind of run support that our Padres offense has been providing its pitchers lately. Padres have scored five or more runs in each of their last four games and in eight of their last twelve. Despite a continuing team-wide struggle with taking advantage of runners in scoring position, our boys have been taking advantage of pitchers' mistakes and improved upon their offensive production these last couple of weeks. We will see if they can keep that up tonight.

And they couldn't ask for a better opposing pitcher to try to take advantage of tonight. Seattle starter Hector Noesi hasn't pitched too well lately. His last two starts saw him leaving the game before the sixth inning. In his past three starts, he's given up a total of six home runs, four of which came on 0-2 counts. Unfortunately for us, our Padres have the league-worst batting average (.094) when down in the count 0-2. Hopefully they can overcome that today and finally get another series win under their belts. To have that series win be against the hated Mariners would be a perfect slump-buster for our boys.

#Padres lineup vs. #Mariners: Venable 9, Cabrera 6, Headley 5, Quentin 0, Kotsay 7, Alonso 3, Maybin 8, Hundley 2, Amarista 4.

— Follow The Padres (@FollowThePadres) June 13, 2012

GO FRIARS!! KEEP THE FAITH!!