IN SPORTS: GIANTS COMPLETE SWEEP OF PADRES
SAN DIEGO — Kevin Pillar’s eyes did not deceive him.
If it looked like San Diego Padres reliever Luis Perdomo was operating in slow motion through his delivery, Pillar didn’t have to wait long for confirmation.
Perdomo tip-toed through his windup, lobbed a ball to the plate and watched as his pitch clanked off the top of Pillar’s left cleat.
If the plunking caused any pain, Perdomo and the Padres were the only ones who felt it. The bizarre hit-by-pitch ignited a four-run sixth-inning San Francisco Giants rally that gave the club a lead it would never relinquish en route to a 7-5 victory and the team’s first threegame sweep of the season.
The Giants (39-47) had gone more than a full calendar year since securing a three-game sweep, but with 30 runs in three days at Petco Park, Bruce Bochy’s squad finished off a stretch of 20 games in 20 days with an 11-9 record.
San Francisco has now scored at least seven runs in four consecutive games for the first time since Aug. 16-19, 2006, when they put up a combined 29 runs in games started by Padres pitchers Chan Ho Park and Jake Peavy and Dodgers righties Brad Penny and Greg Maddux.
Perdomo’s streak of 14 1/3 innings without surrendering an earned run came to an abrupt ending after the hit by pitch. While the reliever appeared confused as to whether Pillar
was granted time by home plate umpire, a tiny shred of uncertainty was all the Giants needed to pounce on the Padres.
Donovan Solano, Pablo Sandoval, Brandon Belt and Austin Slater followed Pillar’s hit by
pitch with RBI hits to give the Giants a comfortable three-run advantage.
Solano, Belt and Slater all deposited hard-hit balls into the right center field gap, but Sandoval hit a flyball that should have been a routine play for center fielder Wil Myers. Instead, Myers lost the ball in the lights and Sandoval chugged into
second base with double of the season.
With a 430-foot, two-run blast into the Giants bullpen in the top of the third, Longoria became the first Giants player since Jarrett Parker (Sept. 2527, 2015) to homer four times in a three-game series. Since 2000, only two other Giants players have hit at least four home runs
his 17th
in a three-game series as Barry Bonds accomplished the feat in four different series while Ellis Burks did it once.
Longoria’s home run was the longest he’s hit this season according to Statcast as it traveled 18 feet farther than the 412-foot homer he hit off the top of the Western Metal Supply Co. building in Tuesday’s victory.