Stallings walks it off in Pirates 3-2 win

Jacob Stallings is that dude when it comes to calling “game”. Whether he’s hitting walk-off dingers or a simple walk-off fielder’s choice, Stalling always seems to come up big in the clutch moments. Tonight we saw that again. With runners at first and third with one out in the ninth inning, Stalling hit a chopper to third base. It wasn’t the most impressive piece of hitting and Phillies’ third baseman Alec Bohm may have had a chance to turn two. He didn’t though. Bohm opted to throw home and Bryan Reynolds, who led off the inning with a double, snuck his foot in for the game-winning run.

Rewinding to the start of this game, JT Brubaker had a nice start. In total, he went six innings while allowing one earned run on three hits. He struck out four and walked two. After four hitless innings to start the game, Brubaker ran into a bit of trouble in the fifth inning when he allowed his only run. After a clean sixth, the bullpen took over.

Chasen Shreve struggled in the seventh inning as he walked two and was only able to record two outs. Kyle Keller got the final out of the inning. David Bednar pitched the eighth and allowed the game-tying run on three hits. In the ninth, Chris Stratton threw a scoreless inning despite giving up two hits. Overall, the bullpen wasn’t great tonight, but they tight roped through three innings and didn’t let things get away from them.

Offensively, the Pirates scored two runs in the third inning thanks to a Kevin Newman triple and a Ben Gamel single. They would not score again until the final inning. In total, the offense racked up just six hits. Gamel was the only Pirate with multiple hits.

Overall in this game, Brubaker was the biggest reason for the Pirates’ win. After four terrible starts in the month of July, he was able to bounce back against Philidelphia. Tonight’s version of Brubaker was the Brubaker that we saw over the first two months of the season. Hopefully, that version is here to stay.

Tomorrow afternoon, the Pirates will yet again attempt to complete their first three-game sweep of the season. Kyle Gibson will be making his Phillies debut after getting dealt from Texas earlier this week. Mitch Keller will be making his first major league start since being optioned to AAA about six weeks ago.

The first pitch is at 1:05 pm.