A couple of Pirates got some loud payback as Tyler Anderson pitched and hit the team to a 6-2 win in the first game of its doubleheader with the Mets.
Things were mostly quiet in the early going, partly due to a Brandon Nimmo catch. He reached over the fence to rob Bryan Reynolds of a home run with two out in the first. In the bottom half, the Mets took the lead with a run on three singles.
The score stayed 1-0 until the top of the fourth. Adam Frazier and Reynolds both singled, and both scored when John Nogowski doubled down the left field line. Nogowski went 2-for-4 in the game and now is 14-for-24 as a Pirate.
The Mets tied it back up, 2-2, in the bottom half when Jonathan Villar went deep off Anderson. That was the third in two games for Villar.
Anderson got it right back on his own. He drilled a home run to right off Marcus Stroman to put the Bucs back up, 3-2. It was his second professional longball, the first coming with Colorado in 2016.
Anderson came out after five. He gave up the two runs on six hits, and walked nobody. He needed only 65 pitches.
In the top of the sixth, Reynolds got in on the revenge act. He’d been robbed of a solo bomb, so he followed a walk to Ke’Bryan Hayes with a two-run shot, his 16th homer of the year. Hayes finished the scoring with an RBI double in the seventh.
David Bednar and Richard Rodriguez handled the last two innings. Bednar threw just ten pitches and Rodriguez just 12, so hopefully they’re available for game two.
