PITTSBURGH (AP) \u2014 Rookie shortstop Konnor Griffin had four hits, Brandon Lowe hit his 32nd homer and the Pittsburgh Pirates surged past the Kansas City Royals 8-5 on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh churned out 15 hits against Kansas City to overcome an early four-run deficit to move back to .500 (77-77) in its bid for the franchise’s first winning season since 2018.<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old Griffin, who missed two months with a left-hand injury that coincided with a summer swoon that saw the Pirates’ playoff hopes evaporate, posted the third four-hit game of his young career. His RBI single in the seventh off reliever Nate Pearson (2-2) capped a three-run rally.<\/p>\n
Yohan Ramirez (7-4) retired all four batters he faced in relief to pick up the win. Gregory Soto worked the ninth for his 15th save, but just his first since Aug. 1.<\/p>\n
Vinnie Pasquantino and Michael Massey homered for the Royals, but Kansas City couldn’t take advantage of a so-so performance by Pirates ace Paul Skenes.<\/p>\n
The reigning NL Cy Young winner scuffled at times during his likely next-to-last start of the season. The 24-year-old right-hander was tagged for five runs in six innings with a walk and seven strikeouts but found a rhythm late, retiring nine of the final 10 batters he faced. Still, his ERA ticked up to 3.91, nearly double the 1.97 he posted a year ago while becoming the first Pirate to win pitching’s biggest award since 1992.<\/p>\n
Kansas City starter Randy Dobnak, a Pittsburgh native, struggled in his second career start in his hometown. The 31-year-old allowed four runs on seven hits with two walks and a strikeout in 3 2\/3 innings, his shortest outing since making his debut with the Royals in July.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUp next<\/p>\n
The series continues Saturday. Noah Cameron (9-8, 3.84 ERA) was set to start for the Royals against Pittsburgh’s Bubba Chandler (8-9, 4.28).<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH (AP) \u2014 Rookie shortstop Konnor Griffin had four hits, Brandon Lowe hit his 32nd homer and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":852760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[160359,2724,363,99],"class_list":["post-852759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ap-sports","tag-associated-press","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852759","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=852759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/852760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}