After suffering back-to-back frustrating losses to open their 2026 campaign, the Pittsburgh Pirates earned their first victory of the season with Sunday’s 4-3 extra-innings road win over the New York Mets at Citi Field.
For the second day in a row, the Pirates and Mets battled into extra innings. But after coming up short on Saturday, Pittsburgh prevailed on Sunday.
It was a back-and-forth affair from the start. The Pirates struck first on Ryan O’Hearn’s RBI single in the top of the first, scoring first for the third time this season and giving Carmen Mlodzinski a quick lead.
New York tied it on Marcus Semien’s sacrifice fly in the bottom of the second, but Brandon Lowe got Pittsburgh the lead right back in the top of the third with his third home run of the season.
That held until the fifth, when Juan Soto singled home Francisco Lindor to tie the game and finish Mlodzinski’s outing.
The score remained even at 2-2 until the top of the 10th, when the Pirates scored two runs on RBI singles by O’Hearn and Henry Davis.
Juan Soto doubles home Francisco Alvarez to bring the Mets within one
Francisco Lindor is thrown out at home trying to score the tying run pic.twitter.com/Wz8P9ly1Ri
— SNY (@SNYtv) March 29, 2026
Jose Urquidy allowed a run in the bottom of the frame but held on for the win, surviving a major scare when Jared Triolo threw out the tying run at the plate for the first out of the inning. Urquidy also stranded the tying run on third by getting Jorge Polanco to fly out to end the game.
Pittsburgh’s pitching staff stepped up with 16 strikeouts, including a career-high eight by Mlodzinski. The bullpen impressed as well, yielding just one run in 5 2/3 innings despite being pushed hard the previous two games.
Now that the Pirates are in the win column, they’ll try to get to .500 with another road win on Monday over the Cincinnati Reds, who just took two of three from the Boston Red Sox.
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