Patience Proves Key for Pirates as the Offense Explodes in 10-7 Win

In one of the craziest games to date, patience proved key as the Pirates drew ten walks in a 10-7 victory Saturday night against the Washington Nationals on a fireworks night.

On the pitching side of things, Wil Crowe got the nod to face his former team in the Nationals. Crowe started off his night in dominant fashion, pitching a no-hitter through three innings of work. Crowe used his off-speed pitches effectively on one occasion and put together a great sequence of pitches against a power threat in Juan Soto to get the backward K.

The 4th inning is where Crowe lost things; he gave up three straight singles to load the bases. Crowe nearly got out of it with two consecutive strikeouts, but Kiebert Ruiz had other plans and scored all three runs on a double.

The bullpen would allow four runs in total but combined with scoreless outings from Kyle Keller and Chris Stratton, the Pirates hold off a Nationals comeback and secure a series victory and look for yet another sweep on Sunday.

On the offensive side of things, the Pirates through 2.2 innings of work couldn’t manage a hit, that is until Colin Moran put together an impressive at-bat with the bases loaded and delivered the Bucco’s first hit of the game scoring Hoy Park; but wait, there’s more, thanks to rule 7.13, or the Buster Posey rule and a successful challenge, Yoshi Tsutsugo was deemed safe making it a 2-0 lead.

Upon further review, we scored a pair. pic.twitter.com/idExURrCI0

— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) September 11, 2021

Bryan Reynolds and Ben Gamel picked up a bad outing from Anthony Banda, with both of them hitting home runs to knot the game back up at 5-5 in the fifth inning.

Gamel goes yard! pic.twitter.com/WHUeZyYsKK

— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) September 12, 2021

Riverwalk Reynolds! pic.twitter.com/QKdQ6QfFFC

— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) September 12, 2021

Reynolds, Moran, and Gamel charged the Pirates ahead to a 9-5 lead in the 6th after a Reynolds bases-loaded walk, a Moran infield single ( seriously), and an E4 off a Gamel ground ball.

Kevin Newman would add insult to injury in the 7th inning with an RBI double scoring Park, making it a 10-6 Pirate lead.

Takeaways

Wil Crowe = Better Bullpen Arm: Crowe seems to do fine through the first three innings or so, and then he falls off. If Crowe has a future with the Pirates, maybe a change to the bullpen would prove to be advantageous for both the Pirates and Crowe. 

All We Need is Just a Little Patience: The Pirates’ bats showed extreme patience tonight, drawing a total of ten walks through the first six innings of work. No Pirate team has achieved that since the 1999 squad against the Colorado Rockies.