PITTSBURGH – On a rainy, gray Sunday at PNC Park, the Pittsburgh Pirates punctuated a sweep with a bat flip.<\/p>\n
Rafael Flores Jr. continued his hot stretch with a go-ahead, two-run homer in the eighth inning, leading the Pirates to a 4-3 win against the Kansas City Royals.<\/p>\n
Flores flipped his bat as the ball soared toward the left field seats. The Pirates had the game-winning RBI in the seven inning or later in all three games against Kansas City, improving their record to 79-77.<\/p>\n
Carmen Mlodzinski had blown a lead on Vinnie Pasquantino’s pinch-hit, two-run homer in the seventh, but earned the win with three otherwise strong innings of relief.<\/p>\n
Flores went 2 for 3, adding a walk and a double. He has hits in 12 of his past 13 games, hitting .426 (20 for 47) in that span.<\/p>\n
It was an otherwise sleepy Sunday, with a paid attendance of 14,979 at PNC Park.<\/p>\n
The Royals took a 1-0 lead in the first inning with three consecutive singles, the final by Salvador Perez, against Pirates opener Lake Bachar.<\/p>\n
The Pirates responded in the fourth. Oneil Cruz crushed a hanging curveball from Michael Wacha over the center field wall, joining the 20\/20 club (20 homers and 20 stolen bases) for the third consecutive year.<\/p>\n
They took the lead as rain fell in the sixth. Wacha issued two two-out walks, then Spencer Horwitz blooped a single to center for a 2-1 lead. With a reeling Kansas City bullpen, the 35-year-old Wacha threw 113 pitches, his most since 2019.<\/p>\n
Pasquantino put Kansas City ahead in the seventh, crushing a splitter below the zone. But Flores came through against right-hander Nate Pearson to give the Pirates a win.<\/p>\n
It was over when \u2026<\/p>\n
Mason Montgomery pitched a scoreless ninth, despite Luke Maile’s two-out double and a Jake Mangum error that allowed him to third. But Montgomery got a flyout to end the game.<\/p>\n
On the mound<\/p>\n
The Pirates used five pitchers in the bullpen game, all but Montgomery and Bachar throwing multiple innings.<\/p>\n
Yohan Ramirez struck out four in his two innings. Wilber Dotel allowed one hit and one strikeout, throwing the fourth and the fifth.<\/p>\n
At the plate<\/p>\n
Flores was the only Pirate to record multiple hits. He’s up to 10 home runs this season.<\/p>\n
Cruz is one shy of his career-high in homers despite playing 53 fewer games than he did when he set that mark in 2024.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
The Pirates are off Monday before beginning a three-game series against the St. Louis Cardinals, their final home series of the year. Right-hander Jared Jones (4-6, 4.17 ERA) will start against Cardinals right-hander Andre Pallante (12-7, 3.70). <\/p>\n
____<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n
This story was originally published September 20, 2026 at 4:58 PM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH – On a rainy, gray Sunday at PNC Park, the Pittsburgh Pirates punctuated a sweep with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[5,936,2123,55,2596,2595,4,252],"class_list":["post-810461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-kansas-city-royals","tag-baseball","tag-kansas","tag-kansas-city","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-kansascity","tag-kansascityroyals","tag-mlb","tag-royals"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117308251374662271","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810461","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=810461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}