Pittsburgh Pirates Secure Series Victory in Dramatic Fashion

Following a dramatic extra innings victory on Sunday afternoon the Pittsburgh Pirates have now won two of their last three series played

Sunday afternoon the Pittsburgh Pirates faced off against the Milwaukee Brewers in the rubber match of their three-game weekend series. The Pirates sent the struggling Chad Kuhl to the mound face off the red hot Freddie Peralta.

The Pittsburgh Pirates and their fans were hoping to see a big step forward from Kuhl today, and to be honest, he delivered in spades. While Kuhl and the Pirates got off to a slow start, he, like the team as a whole, were able to rebound on their way to a 6-5 victory in 10 innings.

This victory included plenty of dramatics and late inning heroics. With the extra inning victory, the Pittsburgh Pirates won the weekend series at their house of horrors in Milwaukee. In the process they improved to 7-9 on the season.

Chad Kuhl

The game started off in a weird way with a one pitch out to start the game and then an ensuing 30 other pitches to get out of the 1st inning. Now when you hear that, you start to have flashbacks to Trevor Cahill’s outing on Saturday night, but it’s actually quite the opposite. He did give up a solo shot to Daniel Vogelbach, along with allowing another run to score, but that’s it.

Overall, Kuhl took a step forward today. While he did fall behind 20 times in the count as opposed to 17 times getting ahead, Kuhl attacked the strike zone, and that’s something you want to see with him. Kuhl today threw a total of 97 pitches and threw 60 strikes which, for his standards, is remarkable. In fact, it was the most pitches thrown by a Pirate starting pitcher this season. The biggest stat of the day was he only walked one batter, and ironically, it was the opposing pitcher Freddie Peralta.

Kuhl’s final line is his best of the year reading, he allowed 3 runs on 5 hits, a home run, a walk and 6 strikeouts in 5 innings pitched. I know I didn’t expect to see this kind of Kuhl today, and I will gladly eat my crow if he continues to have starts like this further into the season. Very big confidence booster for Kuhl, who has struggled since coming back from Tommy John surgery.

The Bullpen

Despite one blip on the radar, it was another successful day for the Pirate bullpen.

The first arm to come out for the Pittsburgh Pirates was lefty Sam Howard, who seems to be used every day for the Pirates. Howard faced three batters, issuing a walk, recording a strikeout and a ground ball out. He seemed to struggle with his command today, but got the job done.

David Bednar would come in with two outs, and after giving up a walk to his first batter, he settled down and got out of the inning unscathed. You could tell after the walk that Bednar got a little angry and made the hitter swing at his pitches, resulting in a pop out to Bryan Reynolds. You love to see the mini-Matt Capps get angry out there.

After some exciting fireworks in the top of the 7th inning (which we will get to,) Chris Stratton would come on in a high pressure situation. Stratton would struggle allowing a Vogelbach 2-run shot, which was Vogelbach’s second homer of the day, to tie the game. Stratton would limit the damage to keep this game knotted up. Stratton has looked below average at best this year, if I’m honest.

After that stinging 7th inning from Stratton, Kyle Crick would be the next pitcher to try and keep this game even. Crick looked maybe the best that he has since early in the 2019 season. He needed just 10 pitches to fire a 1-2-3 8th inning, he also recorded the final out via strikeout.

Richard Rodriguez would come on in the bottom of the 9th, trying to force this game into extra innings. He would indeed maintain the tie after pitching an extremely good inning. Even though we have not seen much of Rich Rod, he has looked very good in his outings, and I would assume he will be a good trade piece come July.

The Bats

Since this is the first game of the year going into extras for the Pittsburgh Pirates, I figured I’ll give you something a little different. The Pirates, in the first 9 innings of the game, managed 5 runs coming off of a pair of home runs from Colin Moran and Reynolds. We also saw Phillip Evans start to struggle t the plate, collecting just one hit in the series.

It is very promising to see Reynolds seemingly being back to his 2019 form, following a poor 2020 season. On Sunday afternoon Reynolds was 2-for-3 with a double, a home run, he was hit by a pitch and he drew a walk. No hit was bigger for him than his 2-run moon shot in the 7th inning, which temporarily gave the Pittsburgh Pirates the lead.

Extra Innings

With the rule of having a runner on second base to start the inning we saw Moran instantly drive in the runner with a double, absolutely turning on it for a gap shot. Moran would stay at second and we would see Rich Rod then be given the task of trying to slam the door shut in the bottom of the 10th.

Rich Rod would slam the door shut on the Brewers in the 10th, sealing the Pirate victory. Today’s extra innings win broke the 12 game losing streak in extras for the Pirates, and boy, oh boy did this series win feel good!

Final Thoughts

• Colin Moran has a beautiful smile
• Bryan Reynolds is back back
• Chad Kuhl took a step today
• Winning is fun