When Jody Gerut hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the eighth Thursday afternoon at Petco Park, it not only gave San Diego a 5-2 victory over the Washington Nationals, it equaled a Padres record.
The homer was the 15th of the 10-game Padres homestand, which ended with Thursday's game. That equals the most homers that any Padres team has ever hit in a homestand. The 1992 Padres and the 1970 edition had 15 homers in a homestand. Both those, incidentally, were 11-game homestands.
What makes this year's mark interesting is that before this homestand, the Padres had hit only 11 homers in their first 18 games at Petco Park this season.
And they might have had 16 on the homestand. Four hitters before Gerut connected, Nationals left fielder Ryan Langerhans soared about the wall in left field to rob Kevin Kouzmanoff of a tiebreaking homer.
Kouzmanoff led the homer assault this homestand with five. Adrian Gonzalez hit four homers, with Khalil Greene and Scott Hairston hitting two and Paul McAnulty and Gerut one.
Kouzmanoff and Greene both had two-homer games, and there were two sets of back-to-back homers.
PADRES 5, NATIONALS 2: The No. 8 hitters in the Padres order accounted for all five runs, with Jody Gerut hitting a decisive three-run homer in the eighth after left fielder Edgar Gonzalez hit a two-run single in the fourth. The victory closed out a 5-5 homestand, with the Padres winning only their second series since April 11-13. Heath Bell picked up his second win in a span of three days.
