With a late-game rally that was equal parts American League thunder and National League small ball, the Pirates on Thursday upended the Detroit Tigers, 5-3, at PNC Park.
In the seventh inning, the Pirates batted around against right-hander Anibal Sanchez and erased a two-run deficit.
With one out, Garrett Jones dropped a single into center field. Russell Martin walked. Pedro Alvarez lined a two-run double. On the next pitch, Travis Snider banged a double off the Clemente Wall to give the Pirates a 4-3 lead.
After Snider went to third on a wild pitch, Jordy Mercer laid down a perfect suicide squeeze. Snider scored, and Mercer was safe at first base.
Reliever Bryan Morris (2-2), who tossed one scoreless inning, got the win.
Right-hander A.J. Burnett got a no-decision, leaving him winless in his past five starts. He pitched six innings and left with the Pirates trailing, 3-1.
Going into the game, Burnett ranked 90th among all NL starting pitchers in run support. The Pirates averaged 2.45 runs scored over his first 11 starts. The next closest Pirates starter to Burnett is Jeff Locke, who ranks 65th with 3.6 runs of support per game.
Neil Walker led off the bottom of the fourth inning by whacking the first pitch from Sanchez (5-5) over the right-center field wall. That gave the Pirates a 1-0 lead and capped an impressive —albeit brief — run of consecutive swings by Walker.
On Tuesday, Walker hit a game-winning home run in the 11th inning at Comerica Park in Detroit. It happened on the first pitch.
In the first inning Wednesday, Walker grounded a single to right off Sanchez — again, on the first pitch.
Three pitches, three hits, two homers.
The lead was short-lived, however. The Tigers scored three runs on four hits in the fifth.
Don Kelly walked, went to second on a wild pitch and scored on Andy Dirks’ double. With two outs and first base open, Burnett opted to pitch to Miguel Cabrera — who lifted a two-run homer, his 15th, into the right field bleachers.
That gave Cabrera 59 RBI less than one-third of the way into the season. Since the start of the 2006 season, he leads the majors with 892 RBI.
Prince Fielder and Jhonny Peralta hit back-to-back singles, but Burnett prevented further damage by striking out Alex Avila.
Through five innings Burnett had thrown 81 pitches, which was eight more than Jeanmar Gomez threw in seven innings the night before. Burnett threw 16 more in the sixth — including a third straight walk to Kelly — then was replaced by a pinch hitter in the bottom of the inning.
Before the game, Pirates manager Clint Hurdle has issued a challenge — actually, more like a command — to his starting pitchers.
“It’s all about (pitching) seven innings,” Hurdle said to the media following the game. “We want them to bite off more.”
There is a caveat: The guys swinging the bats need to do a better job, too.
“We need to do a better job of creating separation offensively,” Hurdle told reporters. “We need to start adding on runs later in the game.”
