{"id":810424,"date":"2026-07-19T15:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T15:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/810424\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T15:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T15:31:08","slug":"bazzana-rallies-guardians-to-5-3-victory-over-pirates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/810424\/","title":{"rendered":"Bazzana rallies Guardians to 5-3 victory over Pirates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CLEVELAND \u2014 Rookie All-Star Travis Bazzana hit a two-run homer to center field in the ninth inning for his first career walk-off hit and the Cleveland Guardians rallied for a <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/pirates-guardians-score-game-1-f46b80ba1e1519d9fa85b29559c9fbff\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">5-3 victory<\/a> over the Pittsburgh Pirates Saturday night to split in a doubleheader.<\/p>\n<p>The Pirates won the first game 7-1.<\/p>\n<p>Patrick Bailey led off the ninth with a single to right, Steven Kwan followed with a double down the left-field line. Bailey tried to score from first but was tagged out at home by Pittsburgh catcher Rafael Flores Jr. after the relay throw by third baseman Nick Gonzales.<\/p>\n<p>Bazzana \u2014 the top overall pick in the 2024 amateur draft \u2014 then connected on a 1-0 changeup by Dennis Santana (2-5) and drove it 414 feet for his eighth homer of the season and give Cleveland its fourth walk-off win of the season.<\/p>\n<p>Cade Smith (3-1), the Guardians&#8217; seventh pitcher of the night, got the win after retiring the Pirates in order in the ninth. Kwan had three hits.<\/p>\n<p>Pittsburgh jumped out to a 3-0 lead after four innings, which included an improbable RBI double by Esmerlyn Valdez in the third. With one out and a runner on second, Valdez hit a towering fly ball to shallow center. Outfielder Petey Halpin lost the ball in the lights and hazy conditions as Cleveland was still dealing with smoke from wildfires in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>The ball landed in right center and was picked up by right fielder David Fry. Gonzales beat the throw home to make it 2-0. According to Statcast, the ball reached an apex of 204 feet and had a hang time of 7.4 seconds.<\/p>\n<p>Cleveland tied it in the eighth with three runs. Chase DeLauter&#8217;s base hit to right drove in Kwan, Brayan Rocchio scored on a wild pitch and DeLauter scored on Kahlil Watson&#8217;s single to right.<\/p>\n<p>Up next<\/p>\n<p>NL All-Star Paul Skenes (8-3, 3.57 ERA) goes for Pittsburgh. Cleveland will go with lefty Joey Cantillo (8-4, 3.56 ERA) in the series finale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND \u2014 Rookie All-Star Travis Bazzana hit a two-run homer to center field in the ninth inning for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[58195,16738,3979,64,63,6115,591,44,12293,129815,58194,85,39],"class_list":["post-810424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-associated-press","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cleveland","tag-mlb","tag-news","tag-ohio","tag-ohio-cleveland-guardians","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-sports","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}