PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) \u2013 Pitchers will always remember their first Major League win, but sometimes the stories are even better. Khristian Curtis has one of those with his first big-league win helping the Pirates to a 5-2 decision over the Giants.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Curtis was third of six pitchers used by manager Don Kelly on Thursday afternoon, but he went the longest and at the right time. Pitching innings four through six, Curtis gave up his first MLB runs (2) on a hit and three walks while striking out a pair, but kept the Bucs in the game. <\/p>\n
It was an outing that typified his mentality which he really learned in just his third big league opportunity\u2014minimize damage. He said he lost the fastball command at times, but didn\u2019t allow the game to get away from him. A few times in the minors he\u2019s tried to be too perfect and it really cost him\u2014the numbers in AA and AAA in 2026 are 3-8 with a 4.90 ERA and 1.39 WHIP. <\/p>\n
Curtis made his MLB debut at Cleveland on July 18 and was spectacular giving up just two hits over five scoreless innings. He then pitched August 23rd at Dodger Stadium with three hitless innings and then his first PNC Park game Thursday.<\/p>\n
It was a big 5-2 win for the Pirates trying to hang on to Wild Card relevance, five games back as the game ended.<\/p>\n
What made it more impressive was the journey to Pittsburgh. The 24-year-old right-hander was in Toledo with AAA Indianapolis Wednesday night when he found out at 10:30p that he might be needed. He was on the road by 11:30p and made it to a hotel downtown by 3a Thursday morning. He said the excitement didn\u2019t allow him to sleep until about 4a.<\/p>\n
That wasn\u2019t all, he wasn\u2019t sure he was going to pitch. The team had to finish medicals on veteran reliever Kirby Yates. They determined Yates would go to the injured list about an hour before the 12:35p first pitch and told Curtis to get over from the hotel.<\/p>\n
Now after going 0-7 in AA this year, he\u2019s 1-0 with a 1.64 ERA in the majors.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable,\u201d Curtis said, adding that he\u2019s trusting his abilities now. \u201cIt\u2019s a dream come true, just ready to keep stacking those up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) \u2013 Pitchers will always remember their first Major League win, but sometimes the stories…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":835476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1558,65822,353699,363,2240,99],"class_list":["post-835475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-don-kelly","tag-khristian-curtis","tag-mlb","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835475","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=835475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}