Peguero's grand slam lifts IronPigs past Bisons for series win

Liover Peguero turned a late hole into the kind of swing that changes a clubhouse. With two outs and the bases loaded in the seventh inning at Sahlen Field, he launched his first homer of the season, a grand slam that sent Lehigh Valley past Buffalo 8-5 and clinched a road series win on Sunday.

The IronPigs had spent most of the afternoon chasing. Buffalo jumped ahead with three runs in the third, using RBI singles from RJ Schreck and Josh Kasevich around a Willie MacIver RBI double. Lehigh Valley answered in the fifth with a three-run rally of its own, with Bryan De La Cruz doubling home two runs before Caleb Ricketts drove in the tying run with a sacrifice fly.

Buffalo kept punching back. MacIver delivered his second RBI hit of the day in the bottom of the fifth, then Kasevich added a sacrifice fly in the sixth to push the Bisons back in front 5-3. That set the stage for the seventh, when the game stopped looking like a back-and-forth contest and started feeling like a test of who could seize the inning that mattered most.

Peguero did exactly that. MiLB Gameday tracked the blast at 93.1 mph off the bat, 344 feet and a 36-degree launch angle, and the numbers behind the swing matched the impact on the scoreboard. Peguero finished 1-for-2 with three walks, four RBI, two runs and a stolen base, a stat line that showed patience, pressure and power all at once. For Lehigh Valley, it was his first home run of 2026 and the loudest hit of the series.

The finish mattered just as much as the middle. Kirby Snead earned the win and improved to 2-0 after 1.1 no-hit innings, and the Lehigh Valley bullpen finished the game with 4.1 no-hit shutout frames. Seth Johnson closed out the final two innings for his fifth save. Buffalo starter Michael Plassmeyer took the loss and was charged with two of the four runs tied to the grand-slam sequence.

At 27-30, Lehigh Valley left Buffalo with a one-game edge over the Bisons and its first series win since late April, when it last took a set from Durham. That is the part that travels. A breakthrough swing from Peguero, who signed with Arizona for $475,000 in 2017 before becoming part of the Pirates system in the Starling Marte trade, gave the IronPigs a road win built on patience, power and a bullpen that slammed the door once the lead changed hands. The next test comes Tuesday, June 2, when Lehigh Valley returns home to face Rochester.