PITTSBURGH (AP) \u2014 Nathan Church is making a habit of stealing home runs.<\/p>\n
The rookie left fielder’s latest saved the game for the St. Louis Cardinals.<\/p>\n
Church ended a 5-4 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates by robbing Nick Gonzales of what would have been a walk-off, two-run homer by making a leaping catch at the left-field wall Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
Just four days earlier, Church took a potential tying homer away from Seattle’s Mitch Garver in the sixth inning. The 25-year-old also had his first career two-homer game in that 11-9 loss to the Mariners.<\/p>\n
On opening day, Church made a dazzling catch at the top of the wall against Tampa Bay’s Ryan Vilade. A homer then also would have tied the game.<\/p>\n
Gonzales\u2019 drive above the top of the 6-foot wall \u2014 373 feet from home plate \u2014 would have been a home run in 27 of the 30 big league ballparks, according to MLB Statcast, all but PNC Park, Baltimore’s Camden Yards and Texas’ Globe Life Field.<\/p>\n
Reliever Riley O’Brien, who got his eighth save thanks to the grab, held his arms over his head with a stunned look toward left as Church casually jogged away from the wall with the ball in his glove.<\/p>\n
Church earned a reputation as an elite defender in the minor leagues as an 11th-round draft pick by the Cardinals in 2022. He’s on his best stretch at the plate, hitting .281 with four homers in the past eight games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH (AP) \u2014 Nathan Church is making a habit of stealing home runs. The rookie left fielder’s latest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,86800,12344,4,41261,10608,9501,10,776,64,4297,9496,15187,82856,36947,21752,18332,619],"class_list":["post-686393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-baseball","tag-cardinals-nathan-church-catch","tag-mitch-garver","tag-mlb","tag-nathan-church","tag-nick-gonzales","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-pirates","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-pittsburghpirates","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-40784-ap-illinois-sports-only","tag-product-40795-ap-missouri-sports-only","tag-product-40809-ap-pennsylvania-sports-only","tag-riley-obrien","tag-ryan-vilade","tag-seattle"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116491640085830795","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}