Last night, the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the San Diego Padres, 2-1. The Padres had plenty of opportunities throughout the game to tie or take the lead, but did the Bucs a favor by not taking advantage. Tonight at PNC Park, the Pirates returned the favor, leaving plenty of runners on base in a 2-1 loss in the second game of the weekend series on the north shore.
All of the runs in the game were scored in the first inning. And while both teams had chances to score more throughout, neither could cash in on any opportunities.
After a rough start to the game, Francisco Liriano settled in and was superb for most of the night. He gave up two runs on three hits with one walk in seven innings, falling to 3-8 on the season with the loss. His mound opponent, Eric Stults, won his fifth game of the year (5-13), giving up one run on seven hits in 6.1 innings. The performance was the latest in a series of games in which the Pirates couldn’t solve a left hander.
Jeff Gyorko’s single with the bases loaded scored Everth Cabrera for the game’s first run. Yasmani Grandal’s sacrifice fly to right, scoring Tommy Medica, turned out to be the game-winning run.
Russell Martin’s RBI single in the bottom of the first inning scored Josh Harrison to cut the lead in half. Unfortunately, that would be the only run the Pirates would score. For the rest of the evening, the Bucs got plenty of hits and had plenty of runners on base, but they couldn’t cash in. Most notably, they got runners on second and third with no outs in the eighth, but three straight outs ended the threat.
This was a frustrating loss for the Pirates, as they had plenty of chances to take this game, but came up short in the big moments. The flipside of a game like this is that the exact same thing happened to the Padres last night. They had plenty of chances to win and failed to come through and the same happened to the Pirates tonight. Things almost always even out in baseball, and that is exactly what we have seen so far in this series.
The Pirates will look to clinch another series victory at home in the rubber match of this series against the Padres tomorrow. First pitch at PNC Park is scheduled for 1:35pm.
Record vs. Padres: 3-2
Record vs. N.L. West: 20-11
Record at Home: 37-23
Overall Record: 62-54
And…
As Always…
Let’s Go Bucs!
