Padres Preview: 07/16 Luis Perdomo makes his first career start against the Giants

The San Diego Padres opened up the second half of their season in exciting fashion, notching a 4-1 win over the NL-West-leading San Francisco Giants. Tonight they'll try to clinch the series win with some more run support behind starting pitcher Luis Perdomo.

The rookie Perdomo looks to kickstart his second half on a positive note after going 3-4 with a 7.48 ERA in his first 3 1/2 months as a Major Leaguer. This will be his eighth start of the season, which he began in the bullpen. He's struggled in both reliever and starter roles, but less so lately. He's thrown three frames and allowed no more than three earned runs in each of his last three starts, which isn't in itself too impressive, but in the context of his season it's a great improvement.

In two outings (both out of the bullpen, and both at AT&T Park) against the Giants this season, Perdomo had quite different results. He threw a scoreless 1 2/3 innings, allowing only two hits, on April 25th. Two days later he served up three runs on five hits in two innings of work.

Jeff Samardzija will get the ball for the Giants in game 2, looking to even up the series and build on his three winning decisions against the Padres this year. After lucking into a victory his first time facing the Padres in 2016 - an outing in which he allowed five earned runs on five hits in 5 2/3 innings - the righty has put together back to back gems in his last two meetings with this club. On May 19th he tossed eight innings of one-run ball, keeping the Padres to three hits while striking out eight in his only previous appearance at Petco Park this year. Then back in San Francisco five days later, he went 6 2/3 innings and collected seven strikeouts while once again limiting the Padres to one run.

But Samardzija has struggled as of late, going 1-1 with a 7.15 ERA over his last four starts. He gave up 18 earned runs on 27 hits in that stretch while stringing together 22 2/3 innings of work.

Game time: 5:40 pm PT
Radio: The Mighty 1090, La Poderosa 860 (Sp.)
TV: FSSD, Fox Deportes San Diego (Sp.)

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