It’s not often that a team can get away with a win in a game where their starting pitcher had nothing and one of their best relievers had even less than that, but the Pirate offense and Mark Melancon managed to pull off that feat exactly tonight. I suppose 99 games into the season is a little late to still be saying, “this is the sort of game that I thought the Pirates could win more of this year,” but these last few games against the Twins and Nationals have certainly been reminders of what the Pirate offense is capable of when it gets contributions from more than just one or two players.
If we rewind back to the beginning of this one, the Pirates found themselves trailing 2-0 after four innings and they were pretty fortunate to only be down two. Charlie Morton’s location wasn’t good tonight (four walks in 5 2/3 innings) and almost every ball the Twins hit early in the game was smoked. The Pirate defense behind him didn’t help, either; Travis Ishikawa missed a scoop on an Aramis Ramirez throw in the first inning that he probably should’ve had that lead to the Twins first run, and he did it again on a Jung Ho Kang throw later on that luckily didn’t result in any more runs.
That’s fast-forwarding some: the Pirates managed to erase that 2-0 deficit with singles from Francisco Cervelli and Ishikawa that resulted in two runs thanks to an error on a Jaff Decker bunt, then a Neil Walker ground ball to short that scored Ishikawa from third. The Pirates scored again in the fifth when Jung Ho Kang was hit by a pitch, went to second on a Pedro Alvarez walk, and scored on a Pedro Alvarez single.
The biggest moments of the game came later, though, after the Twins tied the game back up at three. With two outs and both Cervelli and Alvarez on base after singles, Jaff Decker fell behind 1-2 in the count against lefty Brian Duensing before drawing an inning-sustaining walk. Gregory Polanco fell behind 1-2, too, and after taking ball two and fouling a pitch off, he went way down in the zone to get a slider and bang it off of the right-center wall for a bases-clearing double. It’s hard to call it Polanco’s best at-bat of the week, given what he did against Max Scherzer on Friday, but it was still awfully impressive. Polanco treaded water for almost the entire season, but him hanging in with a left-handed reliever (even if Duensing isn’t a particularly good one) to deliver what looked like a game-breaking after falling behind in the count is a great sight to see. He’s piling up extra base hits in July and he’s on base pretty much all the time. Suddenly he looks exactly like the leadoff hitter the Pirates have needed all year.
After Neil Walker singled Polanco home to extend the lead to 7-3, it looked like the Pirates were going to coast to a win. Tony Watson gave it back in 11 pitches after striking out Miguel Sano in three to start the inning. In those 11 pitches he gave up three singles followed by two doubles, and 7-3 turned into 7-7. Mark Melancon came in and put the fire out in two pitches. With those two pitches he got the Twins best hitter (Brian Dozier) and then another decent hitter (Torii Hunter) to ground out and fly out, respectively.
And then while all of us mortal humans were worrying about stupid things like momentum and extra innings, Jung Ho Kang crushed a Glen Perkins slider off of the facade of the second deck in Target Field, gave his bat a fantastic flip, and (after an easy Mark Melancon bottom of the ninth) gave the Pirates an 8-7 win. With his two hits tonight, Kang’s OPS is up exactly 100 points (.693 to .793) since Josh Harrison’s injury gave him a starting spot in the infield every day. I suspect that there isn’t much that will take that spot away from him at this point.
With the win, the Pirates pull to within 5 1/2 of the Cardinals, who lost to the Reds tonight. They’re 5-6 after the break now, which isn’t so bad, all things considered, especially given how it all looked a week ago.
Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images
