WASHINGTON D.C. -- The Washington Nationals took offense to the Giants trying to add on Friday night as the teams met for the first time this season. The Giants never stopped pushing over three days, and late Sunday afternoon, they walked out of Nationals Park with their second sweep of the road trip.
Joc Pederson hit two homers and Logan Webb pitched into the seventh as the Giants cruised to a 12-3 win. The sweep was their first in the nation's capital since their first visit to Nationals Park in 2008.
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SIGN UP HERE The Giants are 7-3 on the road trip with one game to go, although it's perhaps the strangest game of the season on paper. They'll fly to Milwaukee on Sunday night and play one game against the Brewers on Monday before flying back home for a two-game series against the A's. The game is one of three in Milwaukee that was canceled by the lockout and has to be made up.
Before Sunday's game, manager Gabe Kapler said a lot of Monday's decisions -- including the starting pitcher -- depended on how the Giants came out of their final game against the Nationals. Thanks to the lineup that pounded out 15 hits and Webb, they're in pretty good shape.
In what has become a theme of late, it was a balanced attack. Nine different Giants had a hit and four of them had multiple hits, led by Pederson and Wilmer Flores, who had three apiece.
Likes To Lead Off
With Mike Yastrzemski on the COVID list, Pederson hit leadoff for the first time as a Giant. He crushed the fourth pitch of the game 441 feet to right-center for his 24th career leadoff homer and first in orange and black.
Since 2015, Pederson's first full season as a big leaguer, he ranks fourth in the Majors in leadoff homers. He's four behind Mookie Betts and six behind Charlie Blackmon, but George Spring is way out in front of the pack with 45 leadoff bombs in the last eight seasons.
Pederson's fourth blast as a Giant left the bat at 109 mph. He later added a 111 mph double, giving him six balls this season at 109 mph or above. The rest of the Giants have eight total: Four from Darin Ruf, three from Joey Bart and one from Yastrzemski.
More Joc Pop
The Nationals kept hanging around, but Pederson added some breathing room with a long solo homer while leading off the top of the seventh. That gave him his 18th career multi-homer game and five homers in his first 16 games with the Giants.
Pederson is one of seven big league hitters with at least five homers already and he's living up to his reputation as a crusher of right-handed pitching. His five homers off righties are tied for the most in the Majors with C.J. Cron of the Colorado Rockies and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of the Toronto Blue Jays.
Pederson has a 1.166 OPS against right-handed pitchers and a 1.133 OPS overall. He's batting .364 and slugging .750.
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Not bad for someone the Giants got on a one-year, $6 million deal, no?
Back on Track
Yadiel Hernandez didn't just become the first player to homer off Webb this year, he became the first to homer off him since last Sept. 12. Webb had not watched a ball clear the wall in his previous nine starts if you include the NLDS, a streak of 59 1/3 innings, but Hernandez jumped on a hanging slider and hit a two-run shot to left in the third inning.
The homer cut the Giants' lead to one, but Webb didn't allow another run. A few days after he took his first loss in nearly a calendar year, Webb got to work on a new streak. He allowed seven hits in 6 2/3 innings and walked off the mound with the Giants holding a three-run lead. Webb walked just one and struck out six.
