{"id":808751,"date":"2026-09-19T05:27:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T05:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/808751\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T05:27:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T05:27:27","slug":"konnor-griffin-has-4-hits-as-the-pirates-rally-past-the-royals-to-reach-500-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/808751\/","title":{"rendered":"Konnor Griffin has 4 hits as the Pirates rally past the Royals to reach .500"},"content":{"rendered":"

PITTSBURGH — Rookie shortstop Konnor Griffin had four hits, Brandon Lowe hit his 32nd homer and the Pittsburgh Pirates surged past the Kansas City Royals 8-5 on Friday night.<\/p>\n

Pittsburgh churned out 15 hits against Kansas City to overcome an early four-run deficit to move back to .500 (77-77) in its bid for the franchise’s first winning season since 2018.<\/p>\n

The 20-year-old Griffin, who missed two months with a left-hand injury that coincided with a summer swoon that saw the Pirates’ playoff hopes evaporate, posted the third four-hit game of his young career. His RBI single in the seventh off reliever Nate Pearson (2-2) capped a three-run rally.<\/p>\n

Yohan Ramirez (7-4) retired all four batters he faced in relief to pick up the win. Gregory Soto worked the ninth for his 15th save, but just his first since Aug. 1.<\/p>\n

Vinnie Pasquantino and Michael Massey homered for the Royals, but Kansas City couldn’t take advantage of a so-so performance by Pirates ace Paul Skenes.<\/p>\n

The reigning NL Cy Young winner<\/a> scuffled at times during his likely next-to-last start of the season. The 24-year-old right-hander was tagged for five runs in six innings with a walk and seven strikeouts but found a rhythm late, retiring nine of the final 10 batters he faced. Still, his ERA ticked up to 3.91, nearly double the 1.97 he posted a year ago while becoming the first Pirate to win pitching’s biggest award since 1992.<\/p>\n

Kansas City starter Randy Dobnak, a Pittsburgh native, struggled in his second career start in his hometown. The 31-year-old allowed four runs on seven hits with two walks and a strikeout in 3 2\/3 innings, his shortest outing since making his debut with the Royals in July.<\/p>\n

The series continues Saturday. Noah Cameron (9-8, 3.84 ERA) was set to start for the Royals against Pittsburgh’s Bubba Chandler (8-9, 4.28).<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH — Rookie shortstop Konnor Griffin had four hits, Brandon Lowe hit his 32nd homer and the Pittsburgh…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,326,4,256,10,776,64,4297,185],"class_list":["post-808751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-baseball","tag-general-news","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-baseball","tag-pirates","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-pittsburghpirates","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117296053872141002","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808751","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=808751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}