Sens' Peacock tosses another gem

With his second straight double-digit strikeout performance Saturday, Harrisburg's Brad Peacock surged to the top of the Eastern League leaderboard in that category.

The Nationals prospect allowed one hit -- a solo homer -- while striking out 10 over six innings in another dominant performance as the Harrisburg Senators cruised to a 7-2 victory over the Binghamton Mets.

Eight days after recording a career-high 14 strikeouts, Peacock (6-1) moved past Richmond's Eric Surkamp into the top spot in the Double-A circuit with 66 punchouts over 48 1/3 innings.

"It's great. That's just a great thing," Peacock said.

After last week's outing, the 23-year-old right-hander credited his curveball for consistently missing bats. And although his fastball reached the mid-90s in Saturday's matinee, he said the bender again was his key strikeout pitch.

"It was a good pitch for me today," said Peacock, who explained he had trouble locating it early against the B-Mets. "But other than that, it was good."

The Florida native whiffed the first two men he faced and also struck out the leadoff batter in the second inning. Allan Dykstra followed by sending a fastball out of park, just the second home run Peacock has surrendered this season.

"He actually hit a good one, that was a good pitch," he said. "It was an outside fastball and he pulled it somehow."

Peacock hit the next batter, Eric Campbell, but got another strikeout and induced a popup to get out of the frame. He cruised thereafter, fanning four in a row over the fourth and fifth innings as part of a string of 10 batters retired.

Peacock didn't even realize that Dykstra's blast was the only hit he'd given up.

"You know what, I didn't even pay attention to that," he said. "I just did what I was doing out there and I didn't look over and see how many hits there were."

A 41st-round pick in the 2006 Draft, Peacock established himself as a serious prospect last season by striking out 148 and walking 47 across 142 innings between Class A Advanced Potomac and the Senators.

Peacock also leads the league with six wins and climbed into fourth place with a 2.05 ERA in eight games, including seven starts. He's issued only nine walks for an EL-best 0.83 WHIP.

What's his plan as the season unfolds?

"I'm just going to keep doing my thing," he said.