Bryan Reynolds Missed Play Helps Cardinals Rally Past Pirates 10-5
bryan reynolds missed a liner in right field Thursday afternoon at PNC Park, and the Pirates could not recover after the play helped open an eighth-inning burst in a 10-5 loss to the Cardinals. The ball dropped in front of him and would have been the first out of the inning.
Pittsburgh had pulled within one run earlier on Brandon Lowe’s home run, but the eighth turned fast. Nathan Church followed with a two-run double, Alec Burleson added a two-run single and Jordan Walker drove in another run as the Cardinals stretched the game out of reach.
Reynolds in right field
Masyn Winn sent the liner directly toward Reynolds, and the Pirates outfielder was not charged with an error on the play. Still, the miss changed the inning’s shape immediately because the first out never arrived and the Cardinals kept pressure on a defense that needed a clean stop.
Reynolds said the stadium lights impacted his vision on the play. Don Kelly backed him up and suggested the lighting played a major factor, which is the kind of detail that matters when a routine line drive turns into a longer inning and a bigger scoreline.
Pirates defense under strain
The Pirates entered Thursday with their outfield defense at minus-4 Outs Above Average, a mark that left only the Phillies worse in the National League. That number framed the afternoon for Pittsburgh because the club cannot afford extra outs to disappear when the offense is already working from behind.
The sequence in the eighth showed the problem in its sharpest form. After the missed liner, Church’s two-run double and Burleson’s two-run single turned a one-run game into a margin the Pirates could not chase down, and Walker’s RBI hit kept the inning moving.
For Pittsburgh, the result was not just another loss. It was another game where a brief opening at the plate disappeared once the defense failed to finish the inning, and that is a tough formula for a team trying to survive inconsistent scoring with an outfield already sitting near the bottom of the league.
The 10-5 final leaves the Pirates with a cleaner lesson than a box score usually does: they need routine plays in right field to stay routine, because one missed liner can hand a game to an opponent already rolling.
