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SAN FRANCISCO -- The San Francisco Giants will be looking to close more ground on the National League West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers when they open a week-long homestand with a three-game series against the fourth-place San Diego Padres on Monday night.
The Giants trimmed two games off what had been a five-game deficit in the West by sweeping the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday through Sunday while the Dodgers were losing two of three at Miami.
Once again, the week begins with the Giants enjoying the more favorable of the matchups. The Dodgers wrap up a trip with a three-game series in New York against the Yankees, beginning Monday.
The Giants (77-65) and Dodgers (80-62) still have six head-to-heads on the schedule, including three next Monday through Wednesday in Los Angeles.
The Giants hope to go into that series with Hunter Pence swinging the same hot bat he packed for the flight home from Arizona on Sunday night.
Pence had a historically good series in Arizona, highlighted by back-to-back, four-run games Friday and Saturday.
He became just the fifth Giant ever to total eight runs in consecutive games, and the first major-leaguer since the New York Mets' David Wright in August of 2015 to have consecutive four-run efforts.
C.J. Cron of the Los Angeles Angels recorded the 2016 season high of five runs scored on July 2 against the Boston Red Sox.
A player has scored four runs in a game 35 other times this season, including three times by the Cubs' Kris Bryant and twice over a three-day span by the Blue Jays' Josh Donaldson.
But Pence is the only player to have achieved the feat on back-to-back days this season.
The veteran sandwiched those efforts with a 3-for-5 outing with a double and an RBI in the series finale Thursday at Colorado, and a 1-for-3 outing with a two-run double Sunday to cap the sweep over the Diamondbacks.
He will take an 11-for-16 streak (.688) into the San Diego series. He's owned the Padres this season, going 11-for-23 (.478), with at least one hit in all six of his starts against them.
The Giants roll into the homestand in more ways than one.
They were able to rest most of their much-maligned bullpen Sunday with starter Matt Moore completing seven innings in a 5-3 win.
"He did a nice job," assessed Giants manager Bruce Bochy. "The seven solid innings allowed us to use the bullpen the way we wanted."
Jeff Samardzija will get the ball for the Giants on Monday. He's gone 3-0 with a 3.91 ERA in four starts against the Padres this season, improving his career mark against them to 6-1 with a 3.29 ERA in eight starts.
He'll be facing a Padres offense that San Diego manager Andy Green thought failed to show up for Sunday's 3-2 home loss to the Colorado Rockies.
The Padres were no-hit by Chad Bettis for three innings and totaled only five hits in the game.
"That was not our sharpest game offensively," Green observed. "Over those first innings, I thought we lacked fight during our at-bats."
The Padres will open the series with Paul Clemens on the mound.
The right-hander has never faced the Giants among his first 16 career starts.
