ST. LOUIS -- A few blocks away from the river bearing the name of their shared home, Konnor Griffin and Jake Mangum stood grinning at their side-by-side lockers and launched into a passable impression of a two-man comedy routine.
The material could use a little polish, but the baseball went pretty well for the dual prides of Flowood, Miss.
Griffin paced the offense with four hits to tie a career high and scored a career-best three runs, and Mangum added two hits, an RBI and a run of his own en route to a 7-0 victory at Busch Stadium in the second game of this three-game set, breaking a four-game losing streak.
“I’m proud of Konnor,” Mangum said. “He keeps playing good ball, and he’s going to be good for a long time for Pittsburgh. Everybody that pulls for the Pirates, pulls for the Pittsburgh community, they should be really happy that this guy’s going to be here for a long time.”
“Training this offseason, getting ready for moments like this and just being able to do it together, winning games, that’s all we want to do,” Griffin added.
Though the final margin may not reflect its magnitude, it was Mangum who had arguably the most important play of the game. With the Pirates holding a 3-0 lead and Yohan Ramírez on the mound, the bases were loaded with two out when César Prieto launched a rocket to right center with an exit velocity of 102.6 mph and an expected batting average of .800.
Rather than the ball finding grass, it found Mangum’s glove, as he sprinted to the gap and snatched back a would-have-been-tied game. Two innings later, the Pirates piled four runs onto the Cardinals' bullpen, slamming the door for good.
"Yohan bent right there, didn’t break, found a way,” manager Don Kelly said. “Mangum made a heck of a play in right field in a big situation.
The catch allowed the Pirates to preserve a lead for a starter who more than deserved the assist. Carmen Mlodzinski submitted one of the best starts of his career, spinning five scoreless innings and allowing just four hits, three of which were singles. He struck out only one batter, but also walked only one, and his 95 pitches thrown represented the second-highest single-game total of his career, topped only by the 101 he threw against Cincinnati on May 2.
“Threw the ball well,” Mlodzinski assessed. “Pitch count got a little higher than I wanted it to through five, but was able to kind of stay out of trouble. I thought the bullpen kind of did the same thing. Wasn’t a perfect day for us pitching-wise, but if you have a shutout, you did good enough, for sure.”
It was the second strong start at this ballpark for Mlodzinski, who allowed just one run over five innings here last April 7. In seven appearances (three starts) in St. Louis thus far in his career, Mlodzinski has held the Cardinals to a paltry 2.00 ERA. Wednesday’s victory makes this the only ballpark at which he has recorded more than one win.
“Carmen going out there and giving us a shutout start really, really takes the pressure off the team,” Mangum acknowledged. “For Carmen to go out there and do that after the little skid we had, I really cannot emphasize enough how big that was.”
Spencer Horwitz opened the scoring in the second inning with a line-drive homer inside the right-field foul pole against St. Louis starter Michael McGreevy, and Nick Gonzales and Mangum added RBI singles in the eighth. Bryan Reynolds’ two-run double capped the late rally and put the game far beyond reach.
The two Mississippi boys did not take parallel paths to the big leagues. Mangum, 30, was drafted three times and spent parts of six seasons in the Minors before breaking through last season. Griffin, freshly turned 20 years old, was MLB Pipeline’s top rated prospect in the game until he graduated from the list.
Their paths to arriving at this point in their respective careers might be different. But for two players from the same high school to find themselves making a difference for the same Major League team, lockers next to each other, sharing quips back and forth into microphones (Griffin perhaps a little more quietly), the joy of the shared moment -- with each other and with their teammates -- was palpable.
As Mangum explained it: “It’s a very tight-knit group that really cares about each other, genuinely is pulling for everybody to do well and to be the hero, to get the big hit, to get the big out. It starts with individual work ethic, for sure, but it’s a team game.”