{"id":829581,"date":"2026-08-29T08:30:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T08:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/829581\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T08:30:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T08:30:26","slug":"pirates-fall-in-series-opener-at-st-louis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/829581\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates fall in series opener at St. Louis –"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pirates<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Pittsburgh Pirates’ Jared Jones winds up to deliver in the first inning of a baseball game against the St. Louis Cardinals, Friday, Aug. 28, 2026, in St. Louis. (AP Photo\/Michael Thomas)<\/p>\n

ST. LOUIS — Quinn Mathews allowed one run over 5 2\/3 innings for his first major league win and Jimmy Crooks hit a two-run homer to lead the St. Louis Cardinals to a 4-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Friday night.<\/p>\n

Mathews (1-2) threw 102 pitches in the longest of his four starts. He struck out seven for the second time and walked one in his first outing at home.<\/p>\n

Ryan Fernandez followed Mathews with two scoreless innings. Fernandez left after a two-out walk to Brian Reynolds in the eighth and Caleb Ferguson got the final out when Reynolds was hit on the foot on a single through the infield by Oneil Cruz. Ryne Stanek struck out two in the ninth for his second save.<\/p>\n

Nolan Gorman had a one-out double off Jacob Jones (2-6) in the third and Crooks followed with his fifth home run of the season for a 2-0 lead.<\/p>\n

Jordan Walker and Jose Fermin singled leading off the fourth, and Nathan Church then hit a sacrifice fly for a 3-0 advantage.<\/p>\n

Jared Triolo had two of Pittsburgh’s six hits and drove in a run with a two-out single in the fifth.<\/p>\n

Walker singled and scored on a two-out throwing error by shortstop Jacob Gonzalez for a run in the eighth.<\/p>\n

Jones surrendered three runs on seven hits with a walk and six strikeouts over 4\u00aa innings.<\/p>\n

St. Louis (68-68) improves to 6-2 on the season against the Pirates (65-71), who have scored five runs in their last four games. The win has the Cardinals in third place in the division.<\/p>\n

The Pirates are one-half game ahead of last-place Cinncinati.<\/p>\n

Game notes<\/p>\n

Looking for a spark, the Pirates made Triolo their leadoff hitter.<\/p>\n

He hit leadoff for just the fourth time this season, last doing so against the Detroit Tigers at PNC Park on Aug. 17, an 8-5 loss.<\/p>\n

It was a change that came after both first baseman Spencer Horwitz and infielder Nick Gonzales hit leadoff in the previous eight games.Triolo, a right-handed hitter, has hit .269 against lefty pitchers but .236 overall. However, the Pirates have struggled against left-handed starting pitching all season.<\/p>\n

Up next<\/p>\n

The Pirates will do a bullpen game, with Lake Bachar as opener. The Cardinals will send out RHP Kyle Leahy (10-4, 3.13 ERA).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pirates Pittsburgh Pirates’ Jared Jones winds up to deliver in the first inning of a baseball game against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":829582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-829581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}