Pirates snap 7-game losing streak thanks to 4-run 8th, Bubba Chandler's strong start

Bubba Chandler dealt with disaster in his first major-league start against Milwaukee, but the Pittsburgh Pirates rookie right-hander bounced back by flirting with perfection against the Washington Nationals.

A day before his 23rd birthday, Chandler retired the first 15 batters he faced before giving up a run in the sixth inning.

Then, the Pirates got their offense going to prevent a fifth consecutive one-run outcome. A four-run eighth inning sparked by two-run singles by Andrew McCutchen and Nick Yorke propelled the Pirates to a 5-1 win to snap a seven-game losing streak Saturday afternoon at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C.

“I knew what was going on. It was cool,” Chandler said on the SportsNet Pittsburgh postgame show. “Can’t complain with the outing I had. Of course, you never want to give up a hit or walk. You definitely don’t want to give up any runs. I have spiraled before in the past after having a really strong outing, some unlucky hits that I gave up. … I’m happy that I didn’t today, that I could finish that inning. It was a really cool experience in the nation’s capital, on a major-league field. It’s awesome that we got the win today. No complaints.”

After allowing nine runs on nine hits and three walks with three strikeouts on 68 pitches in 2²⁄₃ innings in a 10-2 loss to the Brewers on Sept. 7 at PNC Park, Chandler answered with a strong start. He had seven strikeouts without a walk while surrendering only two hits on 81 pitches (56 strikes) in six innings against the Nationals.

“It’s hard to expect that perfect through five innings,” Pirates manager Don Kelly said. “Sitting there thinking like, ‘It’s going to be hard taking him out of a game, but coming off 2 2/3 and 60-some pitches, he pitched so well. We’ve seen the competitor he is and how he gets after it. Whether good, bad or indifferent, he’s always showing up the same guy: intense and ready to go.”

Chandler’s five perfect innings were the most by a Pirates pitcher since Max Kranick had five perfect innings in a 7-2 win over the St. Louis Cardinals in his major-league debut June 27, 2021.

Relying heavily on his four-seam fastball, which topped 100 mph nine times, averaged 99.2 mph and drew 13 whiffs and four called strikes, Chandler recorded six strikeouts through five innings on 61 pitches (43 strikes). He touched triple digits on strikeouts of Jorge Alfaro in the second and Josh Bell in the fourth and hit 99.9 mph against Alfaro again to end the fifth. He balanced his mix with a changeup and slider.

“I felt like my command with the heater was really good,” Chandler said. “I wanted to max out. We wanted to get it way up. I was picking lanes to throw to, and I was getting to those lanes. When that’s happening, it opens up a lot of other pitches. It’s not always going to be like that, but on the days when it is like that are fun.”

But Chandler’s counterpart, lefty Andrew Alvarez, held the Pirates to three hits and one walk with five strikeouts in six scoreless innings.

The Nationals didn’t have a runner reach base until the sixth inning, when Dylan Crews hit a first-pitch 99.2-mph fastball for a leadoff single. When Brady House hit a fly ball to right, Crews tagged up and beat Bryan Reynolds’ throw to second base. That put him in scoring position for Robert Hassell, who slapped an RBI single past third base to give the Nationals a 1-0 lead.

The Pirates finally got going in the eighth, when they batted around the order. Pinch hitter Spencer Horwitz drew a leadoff walk, Tommy Pham a one-out walk and Reynolds hit a grounder that ricocheted off pitcher PJ Poulin to load the bases. McCutchen hit a two-out single to right to score pinch runner Liover Peguero and Pham for a 2-1 lead.

After Oneil Cruz drew a four-pitch walk, the Nationals turned to Jackson Rutledge, only for Yorke to smack a single to right to score Reynolds and McCutchen to make it 4-1.

“With two strikes there, I was just trying to look for a heater up and put it on the ground the other way,” Yorke said in an on-field interview with SportsNet Pittsburgh. “Luckily, I got it and had runners on.”

In the ninth, Jared Triolo hammered a full-count fastball from Shonnosuke Ogasawara 409 feet to left-center for his sixth home run to increase the Pirates’ lead to four runs.

“Losing seven in a row, everybody in the clubhouse feels it,” Kelly said. “Really cool to see Bubba step up with that kind of game today, especially given the last game that he had.”