MINNEAPOLIS — Saturday was a day for unlikely Pirates heroes.
In the Pirates’ solid start to the 2021 season, they have mostly been carried by the top of their lineup offensively. A few of their starters have been good, too, and the bullpen has been quite strong.
On Saturday, it was the bottom of the lineup and Trevor Cahill, a starter who has struggled more than any other member of the Pirates’ rotation, carried the day.
Cahill did dazzle, but catcher Michael Perez was the poster boy for unlikely heroes. The reserve entered Saturday hitting .056 with no RBIs. He was 0 for 15 in his road at-bats and had zero extra-base hits on the season.
In the top of the second inning, though, with two runners on and one out, he roped a double to the wall in right-center field, knocking in two runners. Three innings later, in the fifth inning, he launched a homer over the stands in right field and onto the concourse for a solo home run.
He added a single in the sixth, making it the third three-hit game of his career. His offense alone would have been sufficient to carry the load, but the Pirates added a few more runs from the rest of the lineup and eventually won, 6-2, moving to 10-11 on the season.
Cahill gave the Pirates some room for error with his best outing of the season. His only trouble came in the second inning, when he allowed a walk, a single and a double to concede a run.
Beyond that, every inning Cahill pitched was a 1-2-3 inning. Namely, he was inducing a ton of ground balls, especially early on. All told, through the 18 innings that he got from Twins hitters, 11 of them were on ground balls.
When he left, Duane Underwood Jr., relieved him, putting up a 1-2-3 inning in the seventh before returning for the eighth inning. He gave up a hot-shot double down the left-field line to Twins outfielder Jake Cave. Two batters later, Underwood appeared to have notched his second out against Twins second baseman Luis Arraez, when he hit a weak fly ball to left fielder Phillip Evans.
Evans camped under it but appeared to misjudge it against the sun, leaving it to drop harmlessly at his feet. Cave advanced to third and Arraez moved to second. Underwood was replaced by right-hander Kyle Crick, who gave up a sacrifice fly to Josh Donaldson, then struck out Nelson Cruz looking to get out of the inning.
Right-hander Richard Rodriguez took it from there, throwing another 1-2-3 inning in the ninth, his 20th straight shutout inning, which is the longest active streak in MLB.
With that, the Pirates didn’t need much more from their offense. They did get some from another unlikely source: shortstop Kevin Newman. In fact, he went back-to-back with Perez in the fifth inning with a solo home run of his own to deep left field. It was his first homer of the season as well and marked the first time the Pirates’ 8-9 hitters have hit back-to-back home runs since 2012, when Clint Barmes and Alex Presley did it.
All told, then, it was as good a day as the Pirates could have hoped for, jumping on the Twins right from the second inning, and holding them at bay the rest of the afternoon.
They’ll head into Sunday with the opportunity to win their third straight series and fourth series in their last five opportunities.
