Giants turn the Padres into the Giants

San Diego, CA - March 30: Walker Buehler #10 of the San Diego Padres looks down as Harrison Bader #9 of the San Francisco Giants crosses home plate after hitting a home run in the third inning at Petco Park on March 30, 2026 in San Diego, CA. (Photo by K. C.

Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune via Getty Images)) My dad used to always tell me that you only get one chance to make a good first impression. He’s right, though thankfully in baseball, the playoff teams aren’t chosen based on their first impressions. For their first series of the season — a putrid, feckless, and deeply uncompetitive sweep at the hands of the New York Yankees — the San Francisco Giants made a very obvious impression.

If you were to prorate that series to a full season, you would have a team with a blatant identity: Basically no offense, but… Intermittent flickers of offense that are met by emphatic rally killers Pitching that’s pretty good, but can’t resist giving up the big hits in the crucial moments The occasional late-game rally that comes up frustratingly short The Giants have been gifted 159 games to adjust and restore their identity so that it doesn’t align with the first impression, and I like their chances, because my one bold prediction for the 2026 season is that the Giants won’t be the hands-down worst team in the history of professional baseball. San Francisco hit the road on Monday, and took their first step towards restoring the narrative, with a move both so bold and so simple that only a new coach who hasn’t yet been hardened by the realities of Major League Baseball could think of it: the reverse Uno card. Tony Vitello witnessed the script that had led to an 0-3 start and thought, hey what if instead of doing that, we have the other team do it?

It worked. And by a margin of 3-2 over the San Diego Padres, the Giants have their first win of the season — and Vitello his first victory as an MLB manager. While it was remarkable just how good of an impression of the Giants the Padres did, the Giants first warned you that they might reprise the role for a fourth time.