PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – For the first time since August 3rd, the Pirates are back at .500 this season. <\/p>\n
They beat the White Sox 4-2 Wednesday night to get to 73-73. They still sit 5 games back from the final Wild Card spot <\/p>\n
Esmerlyn Valdez homered in the top of the 5th inning to get Pittsburgh on the board first. Rafael Flores Jr. singled home a run in the 7th and Konnor Griffin added two more with a two-run single to make it 4-0 Pirates. Chicago got on the board in the bottom of the 7th with a Sam Antonacci RBI single and and Munetaka Murakami solo shot in the bottom of the 8th. <\/p>\n
Chicago loaded the bases with one out in the bottom of the 8th but a hot shot hit at third base resulted in a double play to get the Pirates out of the jam. Mason Montgomery closed out the 9th with two strikeouts and earned his 11th save. He has not allowed a run in his last 19 appearances. <\/p>\n
It was a bullpen game for the Bucs. Lake Bachar opened with 3 strikeouts in 1.2 innings pitched. Brandon Eisert fanned 5 in 2.1 innings pitched. Yohan Ramirez, Gregory Soto and Carmen Mlodzinski all threw scoreless outings. <\/p>\n
“That was a full team win. It took everyone pretty much on the roster to get it done. It was Lake opening, Eisert, maybe his best outting that I can remember with us. Coming in and really did a great job,” said Don Kelly. “Triolo off the bench with two huge double plays. He made that first one look a lot easier than it was.”<\/p>\n
The Padres now hold the final Wild Card spot by a half game. Arizona is right behind them and Pittsburgh is behind Arizona.<\/p>\n
Playoff Picture <\/p>\n
Here’s what the final 16 games look like for those three teams and if they face many playoff teams. <\/p>\n
The Pirates play the Cubs (playoff team), Brewers (playoff team), Royals, Cardinals and Tigers. <\/p>\n
Arizona faces Texas (1.5 games out of Wild Card), Marlins, Yankees (playoff team), Rockies and Padres (fighting for Wild Card).<\/p>\n
San Diego will play the Gaints, Rockies, Marlins, Dodgers (playoff team) and Diamondbacks (fighting for Wild Card). <\/p>\n
The Numbers<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh has now won 5 series in a row, the longest series winning streak since August 14th through the 30th in 2015.. They are 8-2 in their last 10 and look for the sweep Thursday. They haven’t had a road sweep against an American League team since July 12th – 14th and it was against the White Sox. <\/p>\n
“Playing hard every single day and I know we’ve talked a lot about it but the mindset coming in is to win that day and find any way we can to win that day. I think the guys are doing a great job of that. Staying focused on what we can control and just continue to keep the pedal down and keep on going,” said Kelly. <\/p>\n
Konnor Griffin stole two bags and drove in two runs for the first time in his career. He’s up to 22 stolen bases this season. <\/p>\n
“That’s what I like to do. Get on base, steal bases, get dirty. That’s how I play,” said Griffin. <\/p>\n
The Pirates are at .500 or better after 146 games for teh first time since 2018 when they finished 82-79. <\/p>\n
Up Next<\/p>\n
They wrap the series with the White Sox at 7:40 Thursday night. Jared Jones starts for the Pirates. The White Sox have not named a starter yet. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – For the first time since August 3rd, the Pirates are back at .500…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[31296,73,75,74,10997],"class_list":["post-282762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-mlb-baseball","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-pirates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282762","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=282762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}