Pirates end slump against starting pitching, offense comes alive in win

“We just kept playing," Bryan Reynolds said. "Earlier in the year that’s what we were doing. Good start for us to get it going today and build off of it and do what we were doing earlier in the year.”

The streak of scoreless innings against starting pitching ended Sunday with Rowdy Tellez's groundout to Feltner to score Ke'Bryan Hayes in the fourth inning. At the time, that cut the Rockies' lead to 3-1 after Jacob Stallings and Sean Bouchard hit back-to-back home runs in the second.

The Pirates recovered one of those runs, but they could have done some more damage in the fourth. With one out, Hayes ripped his single and Oneil Cruz doubled off of the top of the Clemente Wall to set up two in scoring position. After Tellez brought Hayes home, Edward Olivares struck out on three pitches to end the threat.

After combining to score three runs in the first two games against Major League Baseball's worst pitching staff, the Pirates found some real pop with a four-run sixth inning. It is the first time the Pirates scored four or more runs in an inning since that April 14 game at Philadelphia, when they scored five runs in the sixth.

Connor Joe jump-started the effort with a line-drive single to left field to begin the inning, and Reynolds followed with a double to right field to put Joe on third. Joe scored on an RBI groundout by Hayes, which moved Reynolds to third.

Cruz then launched this 429-foot home run over the seats and onto the right-center field bar's rooftop to give the Pirates a 4-3 lead:

Cruz went 3-for-11 in this series, but all three hits went for extra bases. He homered in the ninth inning Friday and had a double and a home run Sunday. After hitting .222 with five extra-base hits and six RBIs in 99 at-bats in April, Cruz is hitting .267 with three extra-base hits and four RBIs in 15 at-bats to begin May.

I think confidence is huge for him," Tellez said about Cruz. "It's great to see when you have a young player that's been struggling to really get it going, so it's nice. It's fun to hit behind him, too."

Sunday's win marked the first time the Pirates recovered from a deficit to win since that same April 14 game at Philadelphia. The Pirates won their first series since taking two of three from the Orioles with a win April 7.

"I was really proud of our group because I think over the last like week or so, we get down and I think you can feel it a little bit," Derek Shelton said. "Today we got down and it was like, 'all right, we're going to continue to grind out at-bats. We're going to continue to have good at-bats.' We created opportunities. A huge play in the game -- Oneil hits the homer afterwards -- but we're second and third and nobody out, (Hayes) hits a ball backside that gets a guy over and gets a guy in. It puts us in a situation where Oneil's coming up with a runner on third, so any contact we're getting a run. Little things like that. We get the sac fly earlier in the game. Little things like that, I think will help propel us because we did those things really well at the beginning of the season and those are the things that we haven't done as well recently."

In the sixth, Tellez nearly followed Cruz with his own home run, but his 336-foot fly ball banked off of the Clemente Wall and he settled for a sliding double instead. Two batters later, Jack Suwinski chased his walk-off single from Saturday with an RBI hit to end Feltner's day.

After scoring zero runs off of starters Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, the Pirates tagged Feltner for all five of their runs Sunday.

The Pirates' nine hits Sunday were the most in more than one week. The last game the Pirates posted at least nine hits was their April 27 extra-inning win at the Giants, when they had 10 hits. The last time it was achieved in a nine-inning game was their nine hits in their win over the Brewers April 22.

"A lot (of confidence)," Tellez said. "Long home stand. It's always good to start off with a series win so it's nice to get that going. Good for our bats to wake up a little bit. (Bailey) Falter threw a good game so it was good for us. I think all around it was a well-played game and we came out on top. That's what we needed. We need to get it going."

Falter allowed the two home runs in the second inning but kept the Rockies off of the board otherwise in his 5 1/3 total innings. The Rockies put just two runners on base against the Pirates' bullpen effort of Luis Ortiz, Aroldis Chapman and David Bednar. 

Chapman walked Ryan McMahon in the eighth, and McMahon was caught stealing on a pickoff attempt. Bednar allowed a two-out double in the ninth to Bouchard but struck out pinch-hitter Jake Cave looking to end the game.

“You just kind of lock it in a little bit more, you give up a few runs early in the game and you are like, 'all right, you've got to do whatever it takes to put up zeroes and try to go deep in the game for the bullpen," Falter said. "I tried my hardest and the bullpen came in after me and closed the door really well.”