Three Phillies Homers, One Costly Error Sink Pittsburgh 10-6

A Nick Gonzales throwing error in the second inning handed Philadelphia a 5-0 lead before Pittsburgh had even blinked, swinging the win probability from 67% to 84% in favor of the Phillies on a single play. Trea Turner, Alec Bohm, and Brandon Marsh each went deep, and Philadelphia never surrendered the lead in a 10-6 win over Pittsburgh on July 1.

The game turned ugly for Pittsburgh before it really started. In the second inning, Crawford reached on a fielder's choice, and when Gonzales uncorked a throwing error at third, Bohm and Stott both scored — Crawford advanced to second, Rincones Jr. reached third, and the damage wasn't done. Turner followed with a 372-foot homer to left, scoring Rincones Jr. and Crawford, and just like that it was 5-0 Philadelphia. That single sequence — error into three-run bomb — is the story of the night, and it's hard to overstate how much it cost Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh did fight back. Davis hit a 379-foot shot to left center in the third to get the Pirates on the board, Reynolds singled in Griffin to make it 2-5, and Marsh's 351-foot homer to right was the only answer Philadelphia had in that frame. A Harper double in the fourth pushed it to 8-2, but Pittsburgh kept chipping: Gonzales singled in Valdez in the fifth, Triolo was hit by a pitch to score O'Hearn, and then Triolo's seventh-inning double to left scored both Mangum and Gonzales to make it a genuine 8-6 game. Gonzales finished 3-for-4 with an RBI, and Triolo drove in three despite going 1-for-2 — Pittsburgh's offense was not the problem. The problem was the second inning never happened for them.

Zack Wheeler's line looks rough — 4.2 innings, 9 hits, 4 earned runs, 10 strikeouts — but Philadelphia's bullpen held the door shut when it mattered. Bohm put the game away with a 419-foot blast to center in the eighth, scoring Marsh and extending the lead back to four. That shot, the longest of the night, was the exclamation point on a performance where Philadelphia's three home run hitters combined for 6 RBI and 6 runs scored. Pittsburgh's pitching staff cycled through multiple arms, and while Yohan Ramirez and Cam Sanders kept the deficit from ballooning early, the hole dug by that second-inning error proved too deep to climb out of. Philadelphia wins 10-6.