PITTSBURGH – All Brandon Lowe could do was pray and watch.
The veteran second baseman belted a fly ball to deep right field in the bottom of the ninth, with the game tied and likely future Hall of Fame closer Kenley Jansen on the mound. As the ball floated down the right-field line, the spin nearly took it foul. Then, it doinked off the foul pole. Ballgame.
“I think the wind pushed it back over a little bit for me,” Lowe joked.
The Pirates suddenly caught fire in the bottom of the ninth as Rafael Flores Jr. and Lowe each blasted solo homers to turn a one-run loss into a 4-3 walk-off win over the Tigers on Wednesday at PNC Park. It was the first time Pittsburgh hit the game-tying and game-winning homer in the same frame (ninth inning or later) since May 2, 2014, when Pedro Álvarez and Starling Marte did the honors.
The victory clinched a second straight series win for the Pirates as they continue to push on the outside looking in of the NL Wild Card picture.
“That was a Cinderella story,” Flores Jr. said postgame. “Tie game, homer walk-off. That’s what you dream of as a little kid.”
Jackson Jobe outdueled Paul Skenes through 5 1/3 innings as the Tigers built a 3-1 lead with station-to-station baseball on Skenes as he was searching for command. Pittsburgh rallied back into the game with Flores Jr.’s first solo shot in the seventh, which came as a pinch-hitter.
The Pirates' top bullpen arms, including Camilo Doval, Luke Weaver and Mason Montgomery, all held the deficit at one. Flores Jr. didn’t enter the game until the bottom of the seventh inning. Two innings later, he had two no-doubt home runs under his belt.
The rookie catcher warmed up in the batting tunnel to prepare for a pinch-hit opportunity. When he entered the game, adrenaline took over. He first got on the board to make it a 3-2 game in the seventh on a hanging cutter from Detroit’s Jacob Waguespack. When he came to the plate again in the ninth with one out, Jansen, who ranks third all-time in saves, was also throwing his signature cutter.
Flores Jr. said his attack plan was to “ambush” the cutter. Jansen threw a cutter inside and Flores Jr. didn’t miss it, blasting it 431 feet and bat flipping. Per MLB.com’s Sarah Langs, Flores Jr. is the first Pirates player since at least 1900 with multiple home runs in a game he did not start.
“I wasn't surprised,” Skenes said. “I wasn't expecting it to be two nukes in the bottom of the ninth. But I had a feeling that we were going to win that game, and so when you have a good team like we do, it's like, who's it going to be? And so we had some guys step up today.”
After Jansen retired Spencer Horwitz for the second out, Lowe put one out on a 1-2 cutter. The second baseman’s 27th homer sent PNC Park into a frenzy and marked Pittsburgh’s 84th homer of the season at the ballpark, a new record surpassing 81 in 2003.
The Pirates entered the day 6 1/2 games out of the final NL Wild Card spot with three teams ahead of them outside the picture. There’s still a ways to go, as Pittsburgh now embarks on a nine-game road trip to the Dodgers, Padres and Cardinals. But with a stirring ninth-inning comeback, the Pirates proved they won’t go away just yet.
“I've said it before. It's a long season. You're going to have some lulls and some valleys, and you're going to have some peaks,” Lowe said. “We were not playing our best baseball, and now we're playing some pretty good ball. So it's just, let's keep it here, and keep playing baseball.”