WASHINGTON \u2014 Konnor Griffin had a tiebreaking two-run single in the eighth inning, leading the Pittsburgh Pirates over the Washington Nationals 11-5 on Sunday in a game in which he was also spectacular in the field.<\/p>\n
Brandon Lowe followed Griffin\u2019s key hit with a three-run homer off Brad Lord (5-2) to extend the lead.<\/p>\n
Griffin, the 20-year-old who received a nine-year, $140 million contract in April, showed why the Pirates view him as such an important part of their future. He made a diving stop in the third on Curtis Mead\u2019s grounder, but Mead beat the throw for an in-field single.<\/p>\n
In the fourth, Griffin had to fight the sun on Keibert Ruiz\u2019s popup to shallow left field, making a diving, backhanded grab. The following inning, he made another backhanded, sliding catch in the outfield, although James Wood was able to tag up and beat the throw home, resulting in a rare sacrifice fly to the shortstop.<\/p>\n
Gregory Soto (5-2) got the win in relief. The Pirates blew a 4-0 lead before going ahead for good with their five-run eighth. Bryan Reynolds also homered for Pittsburgh, and Luis Garc\u00eda Jr. and Dylan Crews went deep for Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 Konnor Griffin had a tiebreaking two-run single in the eighth inning, leading the Pittsburgh Pirates over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-236314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}