The Pittsburgh Pirates hit the road from Milwaukee to Kansas City to take on the Royals Monday night. The news broke late Monday afternoon that Pirates shortstop Jordy Mercer would miss six weeks with a knee sprain. The team would enter Monday's contest very thin as far as bench depth is concerned.
The Royals quickly took a 1-0 lead in the first inning against Pirates starter A.J. Burnett. Mike Moustakas singled to score teammate Alcides Escobar and put the Royals up.
The Pirates jumped on Royals starter Yordano Ventura early as well, putting up four runs in the second inning. The inning was highlighted by a Travis Ishikawa double, his second of the season, to score Pedro Alvarez and Francisco Cervelli giving the Pirates a 4-1 lead. Andrew McCutchen would later on make it 5-1 with a double that scored Gregory Polanco. McCutchen picked up his 25th double of the season, this one coming in the top of the fourth inning.
Then in the bottom of the fourth, with Alcides Esobar batting, Alex Rios stole home. It was Rios seventh stolen base of the season and it cut the Pirates lead to 5-2.
In the top of the fifth, Travis Ishikawa hit a two-run homer to score Jung Ho Kang and give the Pirates a 7-2 lead. It was Ishikawa's first homer of the season.
However, the Royals would show off some power themselves in the bottom of the fifth inning. With Eric Hosmer on base, Kendrys Morales homered to give him his 12th homer of the year and cut the Pirates lead to 7-4. The Pirates would add a run later and looked to be well on their way to picking up their first victory since before the All-Star Break. But the Royals were not going quietly Monday night.
In the bottom of the seventh inning the Pirates got into some deep trouble. Mike Moustakas hit a solo homer, his ninth dinger of the year, to cut the lead to 8-5 Pittsburgh. An Eric Hosmer triple scored Lorenzo Cain to cut the lead to 8-6, Hosmer's third triple of the season. Kendrys Morales would later ground out to score Hosmer and cut the lead to just one run.
The Pirates escaped the inning with the lead and knew it was time to go to work in the eighth to get some insurance. Neil Walker smoked his first triple of the season with both Sean Rodriguez and Gregory Polanco on base to put the Pirates up 10-7.
The Pirates would win by that final score as Mark Melancon came on in the ninth inning for the save. Melancon earned his major league-leading 30th save of the year.
ANALYSIS: A.J. Burnett had one of his more forgettable outings of the season, but the Pirates gave him a chance and deservedly so. Burnett gave up six runs in six innings of work, but there were times this year where Burnett would give up just a run or two in that amount of time or longer and get no run support. The Pirates bats picked him up and looked good doing so. There shouldn't be any worry about Burnett because he has still been phenomenal when evaluating his season as a whole. It was his first start since the All-Star Break so it's nothing to read too much into.
As for the offense, those guys deserve a ton of praise for backing Burnett. One guy in particular deserves the game MVP. Yeah there is no game-by-game MVP award but if this contest had one, it would have to go to Travis Ishikawa. He was 3-for-5 with a home run and four runs batted in on Monday night. He carried the load Monday and guys around him hit well too. For a team that only scored a combined seven runs in Milwaukee over this past weekend, the Pirates looked good Monday and may have that trip out of sight, not even in the rear-view mirror.
BIG PICTURE: The Pirates were able to pick up a half of a game in the standings on the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals were off Monday night which now puts the Pirates at four games back with a record of 54-38. This was just one game of a long schedule, but a big win for the Pirates. Both the Pirates and Royals are two of baseball's best teams, at least as far as records are concerned. The Pirates beat a good team and the Royals wouldn't let the Pirates breathe. The Royals kept fighting but the Pirates found a way to come through and match the fight of the Royals. However, things are not all peachy because the Pirates may have gotten even thinner on their bench.
Pirates catcher Francisco Cervelli exited the game in the seventh inning with what is being called right wrist discomfort. The extent of the injury is unknown, though Cervelli was wearing batting gloves Monday when batting. That may or may not be significant but Cervelli does not wear batting gloves when batting. With Jordy Mercer and Josh Harrison out for extended periods of time, the Pirates had better hope that Cervelli is only enduring some minor discomfort and nothing more serious.