Cesar Perdomo Gave Up Three Singles And A Walk In His First Major League Start

Cesar Perdomo pitched six innings against the New York Mets on Sunday afternoon and did not give up a run. Twenty men batted against him. Four of them reached first base and not one of them reached second.

Then Carson Seymour threw sixteen pitches and the game was over.

San Francisco lost 4-2 at Citi Field in front of 29,410. Brett Baty hit a solo home run to left field in the eighth and Bo Bichette hit a three-run home run to left center four batters later, and that was the entire difference in a game the Giants had led since the fourth inning. Seymour faced seven men and retired three. He has now given up five home runs this season, and two of them happened on Sunday, in one inning, on ten strikes.

San Francisco scored both its runs in the fourth, when Jung Hoo Lee singled to right and Bryce Eldridge and Jonah Cox came home. The Giants got five hits all day and struck out twelve times, and after the fourth inning they did not put another run on the board.

Perdomo got a no-decision, which is the correct bookkeeping and a strange way to describe six innings.

What the six innings actually looked like#

The Mets put a runner on first base in the first, the second, the third and the sixth. That is the whole list, and it is worth walking through because of how each one ended.

Juan Soto singled to right with one out in the first. Bo Bichette struck out swinging and Carson Benge struck out swinging behind him. Marcus Semien singled to center with one out in the second, and Nick Morabito grounded into a force out that erased Semien at second base, and then Drew Cavanaugh threw Morabito out trying to steal the same bag. A.J. Ewing led off the third with a single to right and was forced at second two batters later. Francisco Lindor walked with one out in the sixth. Soto grounded into a double play.

Four baserunners. Three of them were thrown out on the bases rather than left standing on them. Nobody advanced ninety feet all afternoon.

Perdomo threw 83 pitches and 48 of them were strikes, which is 57.8 percent, and that number is the honest counterweight to everything above it. He was not pounding the zone. In his debut on September 1 he threw 40 of 58 for strikes, which is 69 percent, and Sunday was a good deal messier than that. A pitcher can survive 57.8 percent for one afternoon. He cannot build a career on it.

The part that does not fit#

Here is the thing about Perdomo's 2026, and it runs backwards.

He started the year at Double-A Richmond and was very good: fifteen appearances, thirteen starts, seventy-two and a third innings, a 3.98 earned run average, eighty-nine strikeouts against twenty-two walks. That works out to 11.1 strikeouts per nine innings.

San Francisco moved him to Triple-A Sacramento on the seventh of July and it went badly. Nine starts, forty-seven and two-thirds innings, a 5.10 earned run average, twenty walks, thirty-six strikeouts. The strikeout rate fell to 6.8 per nine. The walk rate climbed from 2.7 to 3.8. His WHIP went from 1.11 to 1.59.

Then the Giants selected his contract on the first of September, and in ten major league innings he has given up one earned run and two walks.

So the levels go 3.98, then 5.10, then 0.90, and the last of those is a ten-inning sample against the only two major league lineups he has ever faced. The Pacific Coast League is a hitters' league and Sacramento is a hitters' park, and both of those things are true and neither of them is why a man walks twenty batters in forty-seven innings.

A pitcher does not get better by being promoted. Ten innings is ten innings, and it is not enough of anything to argue with. The Giants have eighteen games left to find out whether the Richmond version or the Sacramento version is the real one, and Sunday was one afternoon of evidence pointing at Richmond.

The thirteenth man#

Perdomo is the thirteenth different pitcher to start a game for San Francisco this season.

Counted off the league's own box scores for all 144 games the Giants have played: Landen Roupp has twenty-seven starts, Logan Webb twenty-five, Robbie Ray twenty-one, Tyler Mahle eighteen, Adrian Houser sixteen, Trevor McDonald fourteen, Carson Whisenhunt eight, Blade Tidwell six, Matt Wilkinson four, Anthony Molina two, and then JT Brubaker, Yunior Marte and Cesar Perdomo with one apiece. Thirteen names, 144 starts.

The first five of those names all made their first Giants start of the year inside the opening week of the season, which is what a rotation is supposed to look like. Six of the thirteen made their first Giants start on or after the fourth of August. Tidwell on August 4, Brubaker on August 7, Wilkinson on August 19, Marte on August 29, Molina on August 31, Perdomo on Sunday.

Two open calls on the Grab Some Pine ledger came due on the same swing. Andie Townsend called on the twenty-first of August that San Francisco would use at least thirteen different starting pitchers this season, and a call filed here on the second of September said Perdomo would start a game before the year ended. Sunday answered both.

The reason either of them was a question is that a rotation is supposed to be a fixed thing with five names in it, and San Francisco has not had one since roughly June. The club is 59-85, twenty-seven and a half games behind Los Angeles, and the league lists its wild card elimination number at two, meaning any two Giants losses, any two Arizona wins, or one of each finishes the arithmetic.

The number that should worry you#

Perdomo has thrown 130 innings in 2026. Seventy-two and a third at Richmond, forty-seven and two-thirds at Sacramento, ten in the major leagues.

His previous career high was 127 and a third, at Eugene in 2025. Before that he had never thrown more than sixty innings in a season, and one of his professional years was fifteen innings long because he spent the rest of it on the injured list.

He is already past the most he has ever done, in September, on a team playing for nothing. Clubs keep a shutdown number for a 24-year-old left-hander in that situation and they do not publish it, and the read here is that San Francisco has one written down for him.

The Giants open a three-game series against St. Louis at Oracle Park on Monday evening. Logan Webb starts against Michael McGreevy. Whether Perdomo's turn comes up again around the eleventh, and whether the club lets it, is the only interesting question the rest of this month has to offer on the subject.

Sixteen pitches took his afternoon away from him. A number in a folder can take the rest.

Called Shots#

Cesar Perdomo makes at least two more starts for San Francisco in the 2026 regular season, finishing with three or more. The club has eighteen games left, and behind Webb and Roupp the rotation is Tidwell, Wilkinson, Molina and him. Turning every fifth day from Sunday gives him roughly four more chances and he needs two. What beats it is the innings: he is at 130 against a career high of 127 and a third, and two more starts at six innings each puts him fifteen past it. Clubs stop young arms for less, and this one optioned last season's saves leader four days ago, so no spot here is anybody's property. Price: +125.

Cesar Perdomo is on San Francisco's 40-man roster on Opening Day 2027. He is on it now, he is 24, he throws left-handed and the club spent a roster spot on him five weeks before it had to. Against that is a specific squeeze rather than a general worry: San Francisco carries more players on the 60-day injured list than any club in baseball and all of them come back onto the 40-man in November, which is the month this front office does its cutting. A 5.10 earned run average at Triple-A is the kind of line that loses those arguments. Price: -150.