The Cincinnati Reds are in the midst of horrendous season, but that hasn’t stopped them from heating up over this past week. During their most recent homestand they compiled a record of 4-2 with two of those wins coming against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Pittsburgh recently took two out of three from the Los Angeles Dodgers, so this game felt like a tossup.
Former Pirate Conner Overton started for Cincinnati tonight and kept Pittsburgh off the board during his 6.1 innings of work. He would allow three hits with four walks to go with one strikeout. JT Brubaker allowed two runs on four hits with three strikeouts and two walks over five innings. Tyler Stephenson was responsible for both runs. He hit an RBI single in the second, then hit a solo homer in the fourth.
Cam Alldred made his Major League debut tonight for the Pirates in the sixth inning out of the bullpen. Alldred would give up a hit and strikeout one batter. Heath Hembree followed him with a scoreless seventh that saw him walk and strikeout a batter. The final two innings belonged to Duane Underwood Jr. Underwood allowed two runs on four hits with four strikeouts.
Both of those runs occurred in the eighth. The first when former Bucco Colin Moran scored Tommy Pham on a single to left center. Tyler Naquin hit an RBI double to right to bring in Stephenson. This would be all the Reds needed to cap a 4-0 victory. Pittsburgh didn’t do much with the bats all night, as they would total only four hits. Two of those came off the bat of Ben Gamel.
Coming into this series I think it was fair to hope that the Pirates could take three out of four games from Cincinnati, especially after playing so well against Los Angeles earlier in the week. In order to do that now they will have to win three straight starting tomorrow night with first pitch slated for 6:35pm from PNC Park.
Record vs. Reds: 1-3
Record vs. N.L. Central: 6-13
Record at Home: 7-9
Overall Record: 13-18
And…
As Always…
Let’s Go Bucs!
