CINCINNATI \u2014\u00a0Elly De La Cruz scored on fielder’s choice in the ninth inning to lift the Cincinnati Reds to a 3-2 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Thursday night in the opening game of a four-game series.<\/p>\n
Cincinnati loaded the bases against Gregory Soto (5-3) with one out. Lowe grounded softly to second for a potential game-ending double play but beat the throw as De La Cruz scored easily. De La Cruz hit three doubles, stole two bases and had an RBI.<\/p>\n
Emilio Pagan (3-1) got the win.<\/p>\n
Pirates opener Yohan Ram\u00edrez pitched two scoreless innings allowing one hit with a walk and four strikeouts in his first career start after 208 relief appearances, the most by a Pirates pitcher before making a start.<\/p>\n
The previous franchise mark was set by Michael Feliz who made his first start in 2019 after 156 relief appearances.<\/p>\n
Matt McLain, activated from the 10-day injured list on Thursday, led off the third with a single and scored on De La Cruz’s double to put the Reds ahead 1-0. Sal Stewart singled home De La Cruz to make it 2-0.<\/p>\n
The last time he faced Pittsburgh, Rhett Lowder allowed eight earned runs in 1 1\/3 innings in a 17-7 loss on May 2 at PNC Park, but he fared better on Thursday allowing two earned runs in six innings with no walks and five strikeouts.<\/p>\n
Nick Gonzales led off the fifth with a double and later scored on Jacob Gonzalez’s sacrifice fly to cut the Pirates’ deficit to 2-1.<\/p>\n
Brandon Lowe led off the sixth with his 22nd homer to tie the score 2-2.<\/p>\n
Both teams loaded the bases in the seventh but failed to score. The teams combined to go 2 for 22 with runners in scoring position, with Cincinnati going 1 for 15.<\/p>\n
Up next\n<\/p>\n
Pirates RHP Paul Skenes (9-9, 3.65 ERA) opposes RHP Hunter Greene (2-2, 7.06) on Friday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CINCINNATI \u2014\u00a0Elly De La Cruz scored on fielder’s choice in the ninth inning to lift the Cincinnati Reds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":723017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[58195,16738,3979,64,63,10027,591,44,12293,91812,85,39],"class_list":["post-835697","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-cincinnati","tag-mlb","tag-news","tag-ohio","tag-ohio-cincinnati-reds","tag-sports","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835697","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=835697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/723017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}