Cesar Perdomo Gave the Giants a Useful Start. Minnesota Still Took the Game.

The Giants lost 4-2 to Minnesota on Wednesday, but Cesar Perdomo’s line deserves to be separated from the final score. He gave San Francisco 5 1/3 innings, allowed two earned runs on five hits, struck out two and issued no walks. It was not a dominant afternoon.

It was something more practical: a useful start that kept the Giants in a tied game long enough for the result to remain undecided.

The result was decided later. Perdomo’s outing ended in the sixth, with San Francisco and Minnesota level at 2-2. The Twins did not take the lead until the seventh, when a sequence involving Dylan Smith and Sam Hentges produced the two runs that changed the afternoon.

A loss can flatten all of that into one line in the standings, but the pitching ledger tells a more specific story.

Perdomo faced 21 batters and threw 77 pitches, 51 for strikes. The official game record credited him with seven groundouts and four flyouts, while Minnesota did not draw a walk against him. Five hits still created two runs, but the absence of free baserunners kept those hits from turning into a larger, more persistent problem. Perdomo allowed traffic without letting the innings become unmanageable.

The two runs arrived in separate innings and through different sequences. Luke Keaschall hit a solo home run in the third, giving Minnesota a 1-0 lead. Perdomo then retired Ben Ross and Brooks Lee around the homer, ending the inning without allowing the damage to spread.

In the fifth, Ross tripled with one out and scored on Keaschall’s sacrifice fly. That made it 2-2, but Perdomo finished the inning by striking out Lee. The scoring innings cost him two runs, yet neither became a crooked-number inning.

In between them, he handled a fourth-inning threat after Ryan Jeffers and Alan Roden singled. Royce Lewis popped out on the infield-fly rule, and Emmanuel Rodriguez followed with a flyout.

That is the reasonable assessment of Perdomo’s afternoon. He gave up the opponent’s two runs, but he also worked through the trouble and supplied more than five innings without a walk. In the sixth, he retired Josh Bell for the first out before Joel Kuhnel entered.

Perdomo handed the next pitchers a 2-2 game after allowing five hits and issuing no walks. San Francisco still had time to get its offense moving again.

San Francisco had provided enough offense to make the start meaningful, even if not enough to protect it. The Giants’ fourth-inning rally began with Bo Davidson’s single and Andrew Knizner’s double. Brett Harris struck out, but Marcelo Mayer’s walk then loaded the bases.

Shay Whitcomb followed with a two-run single, bringing Davidson and Knizner home for a 2-1 lead. Whitcomb finished 2-for-4 with both Giants RBIs, and Knizner’s double supplied the inning’s key extra-base hit.

Minnesota’s seventh was the pivot. Emmanuel Rodriguez opened against Smith with a walk. Kody Clemens then reached on a fielder’s choice, and a throwing error allowed him to advance to second.

Walker Jenkins singled to right, scoring Clemens and putting Minnesota ahead 3-2. Smith got the next batter out after a Giants challenge overturned the on-field hit-by-pitch call, but the inning remained alive when Hentges entered and walked Brooks Lee.

Hentges then allowed Josh Bell’s single to center, scoring Jenkins and extending the Twins’ lead to 4-2. Both runs were charged to Smith. Jenkins, who had singled against Smith, scored on Bell’s hit after Hentges entered. The error gave Clemens an extra base, and Minnesota’s two singles converted that opening into the decisive margin.

The Giants did not mount a counterattack. They had one hit and one walk in the ninth, but Andrew Morris struck out Whitcomb to end the game. San Francisco finished with five hits and scored no runs after Whitcomb’s fourth-inning single. That left little room for recovery once Minnesota created its opening.

Perdomo left a game San Francisco could still win. His 5 1/3 innings had cost two runs, with no walks making the assignment harder. The Giants’ problem was what came next: Minnesota found two more runs in the seventh, and San Francisco never answered.

Sources

Official game data

Official game box score