By Zachary McMahon
The Pittsburgh Pirates played the St. Louis Cardinals in the second game of their series at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, PA on Wednesday night. The Cardinals took the first game with a 7-4 victory on Tuesday.
Rookie starter Jared Jones went for the Bucs while Miles Mikolas went for the Cards. Jones went five innings, allowing four hits, one earned run, two walks, and five strikeouts. Mikolas went six innings, allowed five hits, two earned runs, no walks, and four strikeouts.
There was no scoring until the fifth inning when Masyn Winn brought Brandon Crawford home on a RBI single for the Cardinals.
After singled by Rowdy Tellez and Nick Gonzales, Ke’Bryan Hayes hit a RBI groundout to bring Tellez home, and then the go-ahead run was when Joey Bart hit a sacrifice fly and brought Gonzales home.
Then in the seventh, Tellez scored his second run of the game off a solo homer as he was the first batter that Giovanny Gallegos faced as he came out of the bullpen to relieve Mikolas. Gallegos only got one out which was a strikeout to Bart as when Connor Joe pinch hit for Jack Swinski, Matthew Libertore came in and finished out the rest of the inning.
Kyle Nicholas and Carmen Mlodzinski both pitched a shutout sixth and seventh inning respectively as they did not allow a single hit for the Pirates. Colin Holderman could not hold onto the lead as Willson Contreras hit a two-run homer to tie the game up at three.
After the Pirates could not score off Liberatore and Andrew Kittridge, the game went into extra innings.
The Cardinals grabbed the lead when Alec Burleson brought Dylan Carlson home on a sacrifice fly to make it 4-3, so the Pirates had work to do to stay in the game or win it all together.
Jared Triolo pinch ran for Bart in the bottom half of the 10th as the runner at second base, Michael Taylor struck out trying to bunt Triolo over to third, and then Andrew McCutchen walked. Bryan Reynolds brought Triolo home on a RBI single to center field. O’Neil Cruz, who already doubled in the eighth had a big moment as McCutchen was the game-winning run over at second, Cruz hit the ball that rolled into the digital scoreboard over at right field, and won the game 5-4 in 10 innings.
This is the second time this season that Cruz had walked off for the Bucs as he did it in a 11-inning thriller against the Baltimore Orioles on April 6, and it was his third walk-off hit in his career. This was the Pirates first win in extra innings since May 21 when Gonzales hit a Walk-off single against the San Francisco Giants. They had since lost four straight games when it went into extra innings.
Contreras was struck in the arm during a warmup pitch by Liberatore in the eighth inning but stayed in the game.
The series finale will be on Independence Day on Thursday as it will be Martin Perez and Andre Pallante going up against each other on the mound. Start time will be at 12:35 pm and it will be streamed on ESPN+.
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