San Diego (42-67) went 8-1 at home against San Francisco last season, winning the last seven matchups at Petco while outscoring the Giants 32-14. However, the Giants (44-63) won the only two meetings of 2008 in San Diego, holding the Padres to two runs from April 23-24.

San Francisco has won five of the eight overall meetings this season despite being outscored 27-20.

The Padres dropped two of three to NL West-leading Arizona this week, including Wednesday's 7-3 defeat. San Diego, mired in last place in the division, managed only three runs in the final two games of the set and rank second-to-last in the majors with 414 this season.

San Francisco hasn't fared much better, having managed to score only 419 runs.

The Padres' defense also fell apart, as they committed seven errors in the series. Two miscues on Wednesday helped lead to a four-run fifth inning for the Diamondbacks.

"You've got to play better defense," said catcher Josh Bard, who was charged with one of the errors. "Mistakes will bite you."

The Padres were originally scheduled to have ace Jake Peavy on the mound for the opener, but he was moved back to Saturday after throwing 127 pitches in his last start.

Instead, San Diego will hand the ball to rookie Josh Banks (3-4, 3.92 ERA), who won for the first time in nearly two months on Saturday despite allowing five runs in 5 2-3 innings in a 9-6 victory in Pittsburgh. The right-hander, who yielded two homers for the third time in four starts, had gone 0-4 with a 5.03 ERA in eight outings since his last win on May 31 in San Francisco.

Banks threw his only career complete game in that start, yielding one unearned run in a 5-1 win.

The Giants will counter with Tim Lincecum (11-3, 2.78 ERA), who owns a 1.58 ERA and a 1-1 record in five career starts against the Padres. In three starts against San Diego this season, the right-hander is 1-0 with an 0.93 ERA.

Lincecum gave up two runs and struck out a career-high 13 but didn't get a decision in the Giants' 5-3 loss to Brandon Webb and Arizona on Saturday. Lincecum leads the NL with 156 strikeouts.

"I'm more concentrating on the task at hand," he said. "I'm not out there worrying about my strikeout totals or anything while we're in a game like that - especially a close one. It's more, 'Let's get out of these innings, let's get our bats going.' That's pretty much what I was trying to do."

The Giants dropped the final two games of their three-game series at Dodger Stadium, capped by Wednesday's 4-0 defeat. San Francisco, which lost for the fifth time in six games, fell 2-0 on Tuesday.

It was the second time in a month that the Giants suffered consecutive shutouts - they failed to score in back-to-back games against the Mets from July 8-9.

"We're getting shut down too frequently," manager Bruce Bochy told the Giants' official team Web site.