PITTSBURGH — The last time Jacob Stallings notched a walk-off hit, it was a homer to left. If that one was his most dramatic walk-off hit, Saturday’s may have been the most relieving.
In the bottom of the 12th inning against the Miami Marlins, after a long and strange game, Stallings stepped to the plate with runners on the corners and one out in a tie game. He ripped a single to center and secured an 8-7 win, notching his fifth career walk-off hit in the process.
It was simply the last of a few rallies for the Pirates on the afternoon. Surprisingly, for all the talk about the top of the Pirates’ lineup, much of the offensive credit for this win belonged to other players.
Take, for instance, the Pirates’ eighth-inning rally that brought the game close again. You could give Hayes and Reynolds credit for setting up the rally, but the rest was a bunch of disciplined at-bats and some incredibly good luck.
The Pirates were trailing by three runs entering the bottom of the inning. Hayes smoked a double to the wall in left center, and Reynolds walked to lead off the inning. Stallings popped out to second and outfielder Ben Gamel struck out swinging to make things more bleak.
The baseball gods were watching over Pittsburgh, though. Gregory Polanco and Kevin Newman drew two-out walks to score one run and Ka’ai Tom was hit with a pitch to score another. You could call backup catcher Michael Perez the unlikely hero, but he didn’t really do much. Perez grounded a ball wide of first, and Marlins first baseman Jesus Aguilar ranged over and flipped it to pitcher Anthony Bender, who was covering the bag.
He beat Perez in time, but he forgot the ball, whiffing on the easy catch. Polanco and Newman scored, and the Pirates suddenly seized a 6-5 lead in what will surely be one of the oddest rallies of the season.
Somehow that didn’t secure things, as closer Richard Rodriguez couldn’t hang on to the lead in the ninth, allowing a single, a walk and another single to tie the game. The teams exchanged runs in the 10th inning, then went scoreless in the 11th. Reliever Clay Holmes shut the Marlins down again in the top of the 12th, setting up the walk-off.
The Pirates’ starter, right-hander Chase De Jong, was surely more relieved than anybody to see Bender drop the ball in the eighth and Stallings come through in the 12th.
His current run in the Pirates’ rotation could be seen as a sort of audition. If that’s the case, his start was a head-scratcher. The 27-year-old looked very good the first time through the Marlins’ order, allowing only one hit and striking out three through the first three innings.
Staked with a two-run lead, things suddenly unraveled in the fourth. Aguilar tagged De Jong with a home run to left field, then Jazz Chisholm Jr. followed up three batters later with a two-run homer to right. In the fifth, Jorge Alfaro inflicted more damage, sending another two-run shot beyond the hedges in center field to make it 5-2 by the time De Jong departed.
It’s important on an individual level, as every start De Jong makes could be seen as an opportunity to prove himself. The journeyman has spent the better part of this season with Class AAA Indianapolis as the Pirates called up some of his teammates for spot starts along the way. He wasn’t a great candidate for that, since he has no minor league options remaining.
He’s talked at length before about the work he’s done to restructure himself. When the Pirates signed him this offseason, he told manager Derek Shelton that he was a completely different pitcher from when the two were together with the Minnesota Twins in 2019. Perhaps that’s true, but he’d like to show better than he did Saturday in the future.
For his sake, at least the Pirates came out on top, thanks to a strange rally and another Stallings walk-off.
