After dropping two out of three games to the Mariners, the Giants will now prepare for a tougher test on Monday night, when they open their National League West slate with a three-game series against the talented Padres in San Diego.

“Obviously, I have a lot of confidence in my team,” said right-hander Anthony DeSclafani, who will make his Giants debut on Monday. “Everyone just loves the way we game plan and get ready. I think we have a really solid team, a lot of power all around.

“There’s no reason why we can’t be right up at the top of this division or win it.”

Still, if the results of their first series are any indication, the Giants will have some work to do if they intend to keep pace with the Padres and Dodgers in the top-heavy NL West.

Here are three things we learned following San Francisco’s first weekend of regular-season action:

1) The veteran bats don’t seem to be slowing down
Young prospects like Marco Luciano, Joey Bart and Heliot Ramos -- the top three prospects in the Giants' system per MLB Pipeline -- generated excitement during Spring Training, but the Giants ultimately broke camp with a roster composed largely of veterans. Their Opening Day roster had an average age of 30 years, 317 days, the second-oldest in the Majors, according to STATS Inc.

A youth movement is expected to hit San Francisco in the next couple of years, but for now, the Giants will be relying on their veteran core to carry the lineup, which has yielded encouraging results thus far. Buster Posey and Evan Longoria homered in consecutive games to start the season, and Donovan Solano, the reigning NL Silver Slugger Award winner at second base, is hitting .500 (7-for-14) with two doubles through his first three games of 2021.

Longoria, 35, swung a hot bat throughout Spring Training, prompting Posey to joke that the three-time All-Star could extend his career by at least another five seasons if he were to return to the American League to become a full-time designated hitter after his current contract expires.

“Evan has worked really hard on his mechanics and really hard on his pitch selection,” manager Gabe Kapler said Friday. “I think that paid dividends this spring, and we saw it pay dividends in Game 1 of the season.”

2) The lineup could still have a tougher time against righties than lefties
Over the offseason, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi remarked that he felt like the Giants were one left-handed bat short in 2020, when they posted a .764 OPS against right-handed pitching, compared to an .838 OPS against lefties.

San Francisco tried to fill that hole by signing infielder Tommy La Stella on a three-year, $18.75 million deal in February. La Stella frequently led off for the Giants against righties during Spring Training, forming a nice 1-2 punch with Mike Yastrzemski, who placed eighth in NL Most Valuable Player Award voting in 2020.

But the Giants couldn’t do much damage against the first right-handed starter they faced on Saturday. After scoring eight runs against lefties Marco Gonzales and Yusei Kikuchi in the first two games of the year, the Giants were blanked, 4-0, in their series finale at T-Mobile Park.

The Giants started five left-handed bats, but they ended the night with only six hits and struck out 11 times against right-handers Chris Flexen and Kendall Graveman. La Stella went 1-for-2 with a double and a walk, and Yastrzemski added an eighth-inning single to snap his 0-for-12 start to the season.

“There’s no excuse,” Yastrzemski said. “I just stunk this weekend.”

The Giants will face two lefties, Adrian Morejon and Blake Snell, during their series in San Diego this week, but they’ll also draw right-hander Yu Darvish, who placed second in NL Cy Young Award voting in 2020, on Tuesday. Kapler believes it’s only a matter of time before the Giants’ lineup begins to click against righties, though.

"I really liked the lineup that we had out there, and I thought our approach the first couple of times through was just fine," Kapler said Saturday. "It wasn't ending in the outcomes we wanted in hits and walks. But I thought the approach was good, and I'm really confident in the lineup we threw out there today against any right-handed pitcher."

3) Jake McGee is the unofficial closer, but the rest of the bullpen might still be evolving
Kapler has preferred not to designate an official closer for now, but McGee converted the Giants’ first save on Friday and is likely to be the preferred ninth-inning option on most nights. The 34-year-old veteran has breezed through two scoreless innings in his first two appearances of the year, but the rest of the bullpen has already endured its first meltdown after blowing a five-run lead en route to an ugly 8-7 loss on Opening Night.

The good news is that the relief corps managed to bounce back with strong performances over the rest of the series. Matt Wisler, who gave up two hits and a walk and didn’t record an out in his Giants debut, struck out two to help Logan Webb strand a pair of runners in the sixth inning on Saturday.

José Álvarez, who walked each of the three batters he faced to force in the game-winning run for Seattle on Thursday, also worked a 1-2-3 eighth on 10 pitches. The only blip on Saturday came from Reyes Moronta, who surrendered a solo home run to Mitch Haniger in his first Major League outing since returning from the right shoulder surgery he had in Sept. 2019.

“I think it’s good for everyone in the bullpen’s mentality,” Wisler said. “Just going out there and proving that we can be really good this year, and we can be dominant. I think everyone’s going to trust each other and want to come in and follow each other and do our own jobs.”