PITTSBURGH (AP) \u2014 Oneil Cruz hit a two-run home run, Brandon Lowe went 3 for 5 with two doubles and two RBIs, and the Pittsburgh Pirates beat Tampa Bay 5-1 on Friday night to snap the Ray’s six-game win streak.<\/p>\n
Bubba Chandler (1-1) allowed a run and three hits over six innings. Mason Montgomery, Gregory Soto and Dennis Santana each pitched an inning of scoreless relief.<\/p>\n
Marcell Ozuna and Spencer Horwitz each had three hits.<\/p>\n
Ozuna led off the second inning with a single and opened the scoring when Horwitz doubled. Konnor Griffin followed with a single, but left fielder Chandler Simpson’s throw home, though off line, gave catcher Nick Fortes enough time to apply the tag as Horwitz tried to score from second.<\/p>\n
The Pirates have outscored their opponents 23-1 in the second inning this season, the best run differential in any inning by an MLB team this season. Pittsburgh\u2019s best run differential during any inning in 2025 was a plus-19 (71-52), also in the second inning.<\/p>\n
Rays starter Nick Martinez (0-1), who went winless with a 2.41 ERA in his first four starts this season, gave up two runs in 5 1\/3 innings. He allowed eight hits, walked three and had three strikeouts.<\/p>\n
Simpson singled with two out, advanced to second on a wild pitch by Chandler and scored the Rays’ only run when Junior Caminero singled.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes received his 2025 National League Cy Young award, which was presented by Doug Drabek, before the game. Skenes had a major league-best 1.97 ERA and 216 strikeouts in 187 2\/3 innings last season. Skenes, Drabek (1990) and Vernon Law (1960) are the only Pirates players to win the award.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Skenes (3-1, 4.00 ERA) is set to start Saturday against Drew Rasmussen (1-0, 1.13) in the second of a three-game series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH (AP) \u2014 Oneil Cruz hit a two-run home run, Brandon Lowe went 3 for 5 with two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2205,28,115,29645,110,135,3815,137,136],"class_list":["post-236739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-associated-press","tag-florida","tag-news","tag-professional-baseball","tag-sports","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}