ST. LOUIS — Jake Mangum saw Cardinals left fielder Joshua Báez fail to field the ball cleanly and discovered another gear. Mangum’s helmet went sailing. He was nearly called out at third base, though the Pirates saw third baseman Nolan Gorman drop the ball, challenged and won.
It's the type of outcome that has evaded the Pirates recently, the near-miss that actually went their way.
The two extra bases Mangum took Saturday weren’t the big story of Saturday’s 6-2 victory over the Cardinals at Busch Stadium, but they were emblematic of it, a problem being solved.
Three errors for a second straight day, extended trouble hitting with men on base, a bullpen day … the odds were stacked against the Pirates. But a few players got right, as they evened the series.
“We’ll take any win right now,” Pirates manager Don Kelly said. “We need to continue to get better and continue to slow things down, continue to fight as a team.”
The offense seemed to take a collective deep breath a little after the Mangum play and Jacob Gonzalez’s single to score him. Definitely when Rafael Flores Jr. homered in the fifth. But the get-right games were everywhere.
Brandon Lowe gave the Pirates a 1-0 lead in the top of the first with his first home run since the game before the current road trip, snapping an 0-for-14 skid.
The Pirates second baseman ambushed a first-pitch slider and drove it 364 feet to right for his 28th of the season. Lowe had been hitless in four consecutive games, with three walks and nine strikeouts in 17 plate appearances since his last hit.
It came against Kyle Leahy, who started against the Pirates in April.
“We had a game against them before, so it was just, ‘Do your homework. How did he attack you in the last game?' " Lowe said. "He had good stuff. He was gonna attack the zone. Just be ready to go.”
St. Louis answered with a solo homer from Baez in the bottom of the third, as he hammered a middle-away slider from Lake Bachar to center.
By the fourth inning, the Pirates had already stranded four runners, going hitless in five at-bats with men in scoring position.
Gonzalez changed that when he punched a 3-1 single into center field, staking the Pirates to a 2-1 lead. Gonzalez needed that hit as much as anyone, as he had scuffled to the tune of 1 for 25 prior to the single.
It was a similar story for Flores, who homered twice against the Tigers but has been 2 for 27 with 12 strikeouts prior to his three-run homer in the fifth inning, Pittsburgh extending its lead to 5-1.
Flores worked a 3-1 count. He looked for something out over the middle of the plate and got it: a slider that he blasted 434 feet at 108.6 mph for his seventh of the season.
“I think it let everyone kind of exhale a little bit,” Lowe said. “That was a huge part of some run support for our guys on the mound and for the lineup as a whole. Just to be able to take a little bit of a breather and not have everyone playing so tight now.”
Prior to this one, the Pirates had gone 9 for 58 (.155) with runners in scoring position, stranding 54.
Flores’ homer also gave Carmen Mlodzinski some breathing room, which would come in handy when the Pirates made a mess of the sixth inning.
That's when the Pirates made errors in three consecutive plate appearances for the first time since 2004.
Gonzalez committed two at shortstop before Oneil Cruz failed to catch a fly ball off the bat of Cardinals second baseman Jose Fermin. That allowed a run to score, as the Cardinals cut it to 5-2.
The outing was one Mlodzinski needed as well, having allowed 11 earned runs over his past three appearances (two starts) totaling 8 1/3 innings. But, making his first appearance with an inherited runner since Aug. 9, 2025, Mlodzinski gave the Pirates exactly what they needed.
Lowe and Flores weren’t the only ones to bounce back. Mangum, who had been 0 for 15 over his past five, singled twice. Nick Gonzales also recorded his 52nd multi-hit game, and his RBI double in the ninth was Gonzales’ first extra-base hit in nine games. Gonzales entered the game hitting .241 in August.
Time will tell whether a win like this might actually be a spark, which the Pirates need. But you have to start somewhere.
“You look at the teams we’ve faced over the past week and some of the arms we’ve faced, there are reasons those teams are in the positions they are and those guys have the contracts they do,” Lowe said. “To say we’re gonna go out there and never get out, it’s a pretty bad way of looking at things. Baseball is a very hard and humbling game. There are times it’s gonna suck. But we have a game tomorrow.”
Jason Mackey: Jason.Mackey@pirates.com and @JMackey_PGH on X.