Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The Pirates have a lead after the 6th inning only to blow it and lose another winnable game. That’s precisely what happened Wednesday night at PNC Park in a 5-4 loss to the Brewers, a night after they celebrated the NL Central division title on your home field. Oneil Cruz, Brandon Lowe and Rafael Flores all homered for the Pirates runs in this game, but once again came up short as Carmen Mlodzinski gave up two runs out of the pen in the 7th inning. DiNardo and Doug recapped this one on the NS9 Postgame Show powered by Primanti Bros. You can watch or listen here:
Here’s my 3 takeaways from this game…
Have the Pirates Found Themselves a Catcher in Flores?
When the bullpen was getting shelled game after game in the first half, there was a lot of discussion about the David Bednar for Rafael Flores trade last season. We had seen Flores up with the Pirates last year for a brief seven games and it wasn’t a great cup of coffee. This year, he started the season in Triple-A and wasn’t doing great and meanwhile our bullpen was getting shredded. Folks were blasted Ben Cherington for dumping Bednar for next to nothing. Well Flores came up in mid-July and has been getting better and better. He’s looking like a starting MLB catcher and he’s taken over the starting duties on this team. And even when he’s not catching, they’ve been starting him at first base to get his bat in the lineup.
Flores went 4-for-4 Tuesday night against the Brewers and he clubbed his 9th home run in his 40th game in this game. His solo home run broke a 3-3 tie and would have been the game-winning home run had the Pirates held on. He’s now on a 10-game hitting streak and hitting .372 in September. But the power. Flores is tracking to be a 25-30 home run catcher. That is bonkers and would be a grand slam for the Pirates if he can turn into that.
Coming into the season, we weren’t really sure how the four catchers—Henry Davis, Endy Rodriguez, Joey Bart and Flores would play out. Well Bart was traded, Endy continues to not be able to stay healthy, Davis still can’t hit and Flores has emerged as the guy. He’s played himself into this team’s future and I expect him and Endy to be the catching tandem next season.
Pirates Break HR Franchise Record
We probably won’t believe it in 5 or 10 years when seeing the stat pop up, but it’s in the record books now—The 2026 Pirates team has hit the most home runs by a team in franchise history. Oneil Cruz went deep in the bottom of the 4th inning to put the Pirates on the board and break the franchise record for the team. It was also Cruz’s 19th HR this season. Brandon Lowe followed it up with his 31st homer and then Flores added on. Their three home runs Wednesday night gives them 174 for the season. More than the early 90’s teams with Barry Bonds, Andy Van Slyke, Bobby Bonilla. More dingers than the great teams of the 70’s with Dave Parker, Willie Stargell. More long balls than the 2013-2015 Pirate teams that featured Andrew McCutchen, Pedro Alvarez, Neil Walker. More blasts than the early PNC Park teams of Brian Giles, Jason Kendall, Aramis Ramirez. It’s kinda crazy when you think about it.
Now home runs are up across baseball, they’ve been as of late in recent years. Players sell out on the power and don’t care if they strike out, but we haven’t seen this many home runs come to Pittsburgh ever. Lowe leads the way with 31 then Cruz with 19 and they have six hitters that have double digit home runs and Davis and Flores are sitting on 9 with 10 games to go. Pretty wild. Also, please resign Brandon Lowe.
Close to Being Eliminated
It’s almost over. With these past two losses to the Brewers, the Pirates are now 8.0 games behind the Padres for the the last wildcard spot in the NL. Eight back with 10 games to go. I’m not sure what the opposite of a magic number would be called, but the Pirates margin for error is down under 2 because I don’t believe they have the tiebreaker. It’ll all be over very soon and we won’t have to hear from the Twitter druids about what the team needs to do to still make the postseason. “Just go 10-0 to finish!” It’s bittersweet with this season on its final call because the team definitely made some strides this season. Had a sick offense for about a half of baseball, had a 30-home run hitter, they broke the franchise record for home runs, had some of their young pitching put in an important year of seasoning, had Jared Jones come back strong off of his UCL surgery, but at the end of the season they’re going to be in the same spot they’ve been every season of Ben Cherington’s long seven-year tenure—home on their couch for the playoffs. Are you ready for this season to end? And what are you most looking forward to in 2027 if there’s baseball? Let me know in the comments.
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