Andrew McCutchen hit a three-run homer to help lift the Pittsburgh Pirates to a 6-4 win against the visiting Miami Marlins on Tuesday evening.
Bryan Reynolds had two hits, two runs and an RBI and Isiah Kiner-Falefa added two hits and a run for the Pirates (69-76), who have won the first two games of the three-game series. Pittsburgh has posted three consecutive wins overall.
Carmen Mlodzinski served as the Pirates’ opener and retired all six batters he faced with one strikeout.
Joey Wentz (1-2), Kyle Nicolas, Ryan Borucki, David Bednar and Dennis Santana combined to allow three runs and six hits over the next five innings. Aroldis Chapman yielded a run in the ninth but logged his eighth save.
Marlins starter Adam Oller (1-3) went five innings, allowing six runs and seven hits with two strikeouts and three walks.
Jhonny Pereda had three hits, an RBI and a run and Kyle Stowers had two doubles, an RBI and a run for Miami (54-91), which lost the series opener 3-2 on Monday.
The Pirates greeted Oller with back-to-back singles from Kiner-Falefa and Reynolds, who took second on his base hit after the Marlins unsuccessfully tried to get Kiner-Falefa at third.
Oneil Cruz followed with a run-scoring groundout to second. Following a walk to McCutchen, third baseman Jake Burger booted a grounder from Joey Bart, allowing another run to score for a 2-0 lead.
Wentz got the first two outs in the fifth before Stowers doubled at the end of an eight-pitch at-bat. Nicolas came in and walked David Hensley on seven pitches, bringing up Pereda, who lined an RBI single to right on another full-count pitch to cut the deficit to 2-1.
Oller pitched around a leadoff walk in the second, a single to start the third and a double to begin the fourth, but he ran out of luck after surrendering a leadoff double to Jared Triolo in the fifth.
Two batters later, Reynolds singled to center to drive in Triolo. After a walk to Cruz, McCutchen hammered the first pitch from Oller over the fence in left-center field for a 6-1 advantage. It was McCutchen’s 20th homer of the year.
A sacrifice fly by Jonah Bride in the sixth trimmed the gap to 6-2. Nicolas departed and Borucki was greeted by an opposite-field double down the left field line from Stowers to make it 6-3.
For the second straight night, Chapman gave up a run in the ninth, this time on an RBI single by Burger to make it 6-4. With the potential tying run on base, Chapman struck out Otto Lopez to end the game.
–Field Level Media