nick gonzales went 4 for 4 and the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the San Francisco Giants 13-3 on Saturday at Oracle Park. Pittsburgh finished with a season-high 20 hits and a 10-for-22 night with runners in scoring position.
Gonzales Drives Pittsburgh
Gonzales was part of a lineup that kept stacking contact after a slow start. Joey Bart also had four hits, while Oneil Cruz went 3 for 6 with three runs and Brandon Lowe finished 2 for 4 with four RBIs.
The Pirates did not score through four innings against Landen Roupp, but they kept forcing him deeper into the game. By the end of the fourth, he had thrown 94 pitches and was done with no outs in the fifth.
Roupp Runs Into Pressure
Don Kelly said after Friday’s series-opening defeat that poor situational hitting had been a theme in many losses, and Saturday looked different. “I thought we had really good at-bats early on and continued throughout the whole game,” he said on the postgame show, adding that the Pirates were “going the other way, doing the things that we need to do to score runs.”
That approach showed up in the sixth, when Pittsburgh scored four runs to move ahead 6-1. Konnor Griffin added two RBIs in the win, and the Pirates kept the pressure on long enough to turn a tight game into a wide gap.
Bryce Eldridge In The Fifth
Bryce Eldridge gave the Giants their clearest jolt with his first major league home run in the fifth inning, trimming the Pirates’ lead to 2-1. Kelly also pointed to the pitch count effect, saying, “Any time you can get (a starter) into the 90s, like it was after four — (Roupp) goes back out, and then to even drive the pitch count of the bullpen up, too — again, I thought the approach was awesome,” he said after the game.
The result moved Pittsburgh to 22-18 and dropped San Francisco to 15-24. For the Pirates, the number that stands out is the 20-hit total; for Gonzales, it was a four-hit day inside a lineup that finally cashed in chances instead of leaving them for later.
