The Pittsburgh Pirates are still waiting for a big hit. They dropped tonight’s game 2-0 to the Baltimore Orioles, while collecting only three hits.
Roansy Contreras started the game and was able to go seven innings while giving up the two earned runs. He gave up only five hits, but two of those left the park off the bats of Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson. Roansy walked only one batter, but also only struck out one. The Baltimore Orioles batters were getting the ball in the air often, as Contreras had six groundouts to fourteen flyouts.
Pirates offense didn’t have a lot of opportunities against Orioles starter Tyler Wells, and they weren’t able to come through when they got their chances, going 0-for-3 with RISP.
One of the bigger chances was in the seventh inning with two runners on and two outs. Miguel Andujar hit a long fly ball to right field. Orioles right fielder Anthony Santander tracked back, and made a jumping catch at the wall for the final out. If you didn’t see the play, this sounds like it was more of a difficult play than it was. Santander had more room than he thought, and likely didn’t need to jump.
Tucupita Marcano pinch-hit for Chris Owings in the eighth, and hit a one-out double. That didn’t amount to much with Jason Delay grounding out, moving Marcano to third, and then Ke’Bryan Hayes lining out.
Robert Stephenson sat down Baltimore in the bottom of the eighth on eleven pitches and one strikeout.
The once twelve games over .500 Bucs, are now only two games over. Mitch Keller toes the rubber on Sunday for the final game of the series. At this rate, the Pirates are going to need another scoreless nine innings, and maybe even more.
