NEW YORK -- The Pirates and Mets found themselves in a pitchers' duel late Saturday afternoon at Citi Field. It ended in the bottom of the 11th inning when New York broke through against Pittsburgh left-hander Hunter Barco in a 4-2 loss.
The Pirates had a 2-1 lead entering the bottom of the 11th, but New York won the game on a three-run homer by Luis Robert Jr. With Bo Bichette as the automatic runner on second base, Jorge Polanco was behind in the count, 1-2, but managed to draw a walk to put runners on first and second. Robert was the next batter. He swung at a 1-0 slider down and in, hitting the ball over the left-center-field wall to win the game.
“I've got to give credit to Robert there. It was a great swing,” Barco said. “It was an executed slider, down over the plate. He put a really good swing on it. Obviously, you don’t want it to happen. Tip your cap to him and get back after it.
“... I really don’t like the leadoff walk [to Polanco] there. If I don’t walk him, it’s a different situation. I end up on the other side of things. I keep going at it and keep executing pitches.”
If there was a positive that came out of Barco’s outing, it occurred in the 10th inning. After Brett Baty scored the tying run on a single by Luis Torrens, Barco found himself in trouble when the Mets had the bases loaded with no outs, but he was able to send the game to the 11th.
Francisco Lindor went in the batter’s box and hit a grounder to second baseman Brandon Lowe, who was able to get Marcus Semien at the plate for the forceout. Juan Soto was next and hit a dribbler toward Barco, who flipped it to catcher Henry Davis to nail Jared Young at home as well.
“Honestly, I don’t know [how I made that play],” said Barco, baseball's No. 94 prospect per MLB Pipeline. “That was just the heat of the moment and [I] let instincts take over. That’s what we do all Spring Training. We practice those barehanded flips. That I actually got to do one was pretty cool.”
But there was something worse than the three-run homer Barco allowed. In a game where the first-pitch temperature was 42 degrees, the Pirates’ bats went cold. It was the antithesis of Thursday’s season opener, when they scored seven runs.
On Saturday, Pittsburgh went 2-for-18 with runners in scoring position and left 17 on base. Pittsburgh didn’t get its first clutch hit until the 10th, when Nick Gonzales singled to left-center field, scoring Bryan Reynolds.
“That’s tough, but we’ll be better. As we go through [the season], we have to find a way to push those runs across,” Pirates manager Don Kelly said. “We played offensively during the opener. Today, with runners in scoring position, it kind of evaded us. But we are going to be better at it.”
Brandon Lowe didn’t give excuses as to why his team couldn’t deliver in the clutch, but the fact is, it wasn’t a beautiful day to swing the bats.
“You had the weather, the wind, the time of the game where the shadows were pretty tough throughout the game,” Lowe said. “Not taking anything away from the Mets staff over there, it was just a perfect storm. It was a tough offensive game. We waited there to the end, until the other side [won]. It was kind of a tough day to hit. We left a lot of opportunities on the table.”