Longo heeds Hangar's rules and loses

Neil Longo pitched a strong game for Lancaster, but San Jose still came away with the victory.

And did we mention keep the ball down?

Here's the rub. Longo did keep the ball down to San Jose Giants slugger Mike Glendenning. He kept it reasonably down to Glendenning's wingman in the Giants' batting order, Tim Flaherty.

Which is where Rule No. 2 comes in. Glendenning and Flaherty hit back-to-back homers in the third inning, spoiling a strong eight innings from Longo and leaving the Lancaster JetHawks with a 5-3 loss to San Jose in front of 3,367 fans at The Hangar.

"This is part of character building," Lancaster pitching coach Greg Harris said about Longo's eight-inning, eight-hit outing Friday night. "He had a bad third inning, he got some pitches up. Then he regained his composure and concentration and gave up one run over the next five innings. That's pitching."

And Longo did his share of it Friday night. Of his eight hits, five came in rapid-fire succession during that third inning.

Three of those - Brett Casper's two-out infield single and routine singles by Angel Melendez and Kevin Tommasini - won't keep Longo's brain working overtime.

The pitches to Glendenning and Flaherty? Neither will they.

After Casper's infield single under third baseman Jason Regan's glove, Longo threw a knee-high fastball to Glendenning that the Cal League's home run leader took the opposite way for his 23rd blast of the season.

"In this park, it's going to happen every now and then," Longo said. "I could have thrown it more on the corner, but it wasn't a bad pitch I thought. He just went down and got it."

The pitch to Flaherty probably wasn't as aesthetically pleasing to Longo, but it wasn't as if he put it on a tee. Nevertheless, Flaherty's fly ball got up into the jet stream and carried just over the left-field wall.

"The other one was just a fly ball that just kept going and going. I knew it was gone as soon as it went up there," Longo said.

In that regard, it bore a striking resemblance to Harvey Hargrove's second-inning homer for the JetHawks, which tied the game at 1-1. Save for the field, it also could've passed for Wilfredo Quintana's ninth-inning blast, which carried over the right-field wall and brought the JetHawks within 5-3.

Instead, the Giants had their 11th straight win and Longo his sixth - and undoubtedly one of his toughest - loss.

"I felt fine. I felt like my stuff was getting better as I went on," said Longo, who threw 110 pitches.

Take away that third inning and Longo generally led the Giants on snipe hunts for breaking balls and low fastballs. And he had the JetHawks' bullpen, which had been stretched rather thin of late, taking some needed R&R.

"We needed him to pick us up right there. We only had one guy in the bullpen ready to pitch tonight (Zach Stark, who struck out the side in the ninth)," Lancaster manager Darrin Garner said. "Stark was it. He (Longo) picked us up big-time tonight.

"We had a chance to score some runs tonight and we didn't score, but that's the way it's been going."

Instead, the JetHawks settled for the two solo homers and six hits overall off three San Jose pitchers, which - at least Friday night - explains why Lancaster has dropped 10 of its last 11.

Quintana, who tripled and scored on Jermaine Clark's pinchhit grounder in the seventh, and Joel Ramirez accounted for two hits apiece.

"It's a loss and we still feel bad about the loss, but it's a better loss," Garner said. "You got some quality pitching tonight and some pretty good defense. It's not as bad."