Pirates bounce back with win over Nats

PITTSBURGH – During his pregame availability with local media Thursday, Pirates manager Derek Shelton brought up that his club wanted to move on from Wednesday’s no-hitter “as quickly as possible.”

The bats heeded the call, beating the Nationals at PNC Park in a complete team offensive effort, 9-4. Eight different Pirates recorded a hit. Six drove in a run. And while there can be a temptation to go out and swing after being held without a hit the night prior, the hitters were patient, drawing a season-high nine walks.

“I think there’s a tendency that you can come out and go like, ‘OK, I wanna get a hit right now because we didn’t get one yesterday,’” Shelton said. “But I was pleased with the fact that we stayed with it throughout the game.”

Rather than chase, most of the lineup seemed to have a good read on Nationals starter Jake Irvin’s curveball. Jared Triolo, Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Bryan Reynolds all jumped on curveballs in the zone for RBI hits in the second inning, before Nick Gonzales stayed on a 2-2 sinker and shot it to right field for a two-run single, which would prove to be the winning runs.

“Hitting is contagious,” Gonzales said. “It’s very contagious. When we’re moving the bat like that, there’s not a lot of teams that can hold that.”

After a five-run second inning of stringing together two-out hits, a three-run sixth was due to the team’s patience, drawing a pair of bases-loaded walks and plating another run on a wild pitch. The Nationals’ pitching staff entered with the fourth-lowest walk rate in the National League (7.7%), but the Pirates didn’t do them many favors and rarely chased:

“I think when you get guys on base like that, have more walks than strikeouts, you put your offense in a good position to keep the bat rolling and get runs across,” Gonzales said.

“I think [walks can lead to] just a ton of pressure, especially when guys come in and they can’t command the zone, then you can really shrink the zone down and we didn’t chase,” Shelton said. “We did a nice job.”

Starter Bailey Falter stumbled out of the gate, allowing three runs in the first, including an Andrés Chaparro home run, but settled in and executed when he needed to, spinning four more innings with no additional damage, which paired well with the most run support he’s had in an outing since May 24.

“That’s big-time,” Falter said. “Whenever we score runs, our job is to go out there and put up a zero. That’s what was going through my mind the whole entire time.”

Falter has been searching for his curveball of late, throwing a harder breaking ball that was more slider-y. It may not have been ideal, but it played after a less than ideal start. After the bullpen was taxed for five innings Wednesday, that rebound was very much needed.

“He didn’t look like he was in rhythm in the first inning, just didn’t look comfortable,” Shelton said. “Then he was able to bounce back. I mean, he was at 71 [pitches] through three and was able to finish at 94, which shows he was efficient in those last two innings.”

Wednesday’s loss is firmly in the rearview mirror, good news for a team that is trying to finish strong after a messy month of August. A rebound comeback win is a step in the right direction for making that possible.

“Just to put up runs, come back and win in the fashion we did where we were down 3-0 and rallied back … that was good to just be able to turn the page,” Rowdy Tellez said.