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Pirates vs. Rays Rain Delay, April 18: Start Time, Full Details, Updates

Why can't we have nice things?
ByEric Cole|
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Jun 28, 2025; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; The PNC Park grounds crew attempts to blow rain off of the playing surface in order to resume the game against the New York Mets after a rain delay halted play in the second inning at PNC Park. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images
Jun 28, 2025; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; The PNC Park grounds crew attempts to blow rain off of the playing surface in order to resume the game against the New York Mets after a rain delay halted play in the second inning at PNC Park. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images | Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

When the forecast for the Pittsburgh Pirates' game on Saturday against the Rays came out, there was a pretty obvious problem. A line of storms are coming through basically the entire Ohio Valley and were likely to arrive as the game was set to start. While the Pirates did move the start time of the game up to 3:30 PM EST to try and avoid any issues, the move was not enough to outsmart Mother Nature.

Even moving the game up, the forecast looked dicey and the odds were good that the storms would arrive during the course of the game. That is exactly what ended up happening and now we are officially in a rain delay anyways. As Pirates beat writer Jason Mackey correctly noted, this probably isn't going to be a particularly short wait.

**UPDATE: 6:38 PM EST**

Well, the delay will end up being well over two hours thanks to some slow moving storms, but we finally have a start time and the tarp is off. Barring a change in the forecast, the Pirates and Rays will resume their game at around 7:05 PM EST.

Pirates vs. Rays Rain Delay, 4/18/26: When will the game start?

The good news here is that the rain is forecasted to move out of the area pretty quickly. While both teams were probably hoping to get in an official number of innings before the rain showed up, the weather should improve in a couple hours at most. If the forecast is close to correct, a delay in the range of one hour seems like the most likely outcome. While there is a day game tomorrow, there still seems to be plenty of time to finish this game up without tomorrow's matchup looking like an episode of The Walking Dead.

We will keep this post updated as more information becomes available from the powers that be including any announced game start times. There should still be baseball today assuming the field holds up, so get comfortable. With this game getting all the way to the fourth inning before getting delayed, you can bet that everyone involved is going to try and avoid rescheduling the rest of this game.

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