The Pirates have guaranteed themselves a winning season with an 8-4 victory over the Cincinatti Reds last night at Great American Ballpark.
The Pirates started the scoring in the first inning with a line-drive double by Cory Dickerson that scored Adam Frazier, and Elias Diaz batted in Starling Marte on a fly-out to give the Pirates a 2-0 lead. After a two-run homer by the Reds in the third, Diaz hit a solo homer to put the Pirates ahead by one. Colin Moran hit a sac-fly to center to score Marte, and Kevin Kramer hit an RBI single to score Josh Bell in the top of the 6th. In the 8th, Colin Moran hit a solo homer to center field, and Kevin Newman hit an RBI single to score Kramer. Moran would hit an RBI single to score Dickerson in the 9th to round out the routing. Tucker Barnhart homered in the bottom of the 9th but it wasn’t enough to beat the bucs.
Steven Barault got the win in relief, as starter Nick Kingham went 3 and 2/3rds innings. The pirates pitching squad all notched 10 strikeouts and allowed four runs on 13 hits.
The two teams play this afternoon on WCCS AM 1160 and 101.1 FM starting at 3:45 with the pre-game show.
