Pirates Steal the Fourth, Bury Nationals 7-1
Pittsburgh opened the scoring on Independence Day the most audacious way possible — Griffin stole home in the first inning. Washington answered with a 428-foot James Wood shot to right that briefly knotted things up, but the Pirates blew the game open in the second and never looked back.
The story of the night was Pittsburgh's second inning. Trailing 1-1 after Wood's laser tied it, the Pirates sent eight men to the plate and scored four times without hitting anything particularly hard. Henry Davis reached on an infield single to third, plating Nick Gonzales to put Pittsburgh back in front. Then Brandon Lowe singled to center, scoring two more to make it 4-1. Esmerlyn Valdez followed with a single to right, scoring Davis, and just like that the Nationals were staring at a 5-1 deficit before the game was two innings old. Zack Littell was decent — 6.0 innings, 4 hits, 1 earned run — but his bullpen couldn't hold the line. Riley Cornelio allowed 3 hits, 2 earned runs, and 2 walks over 2.0 innings, and Pittsburgh tacked on two more in the eighth when Gonzales singled to left to score Bryan Reynolds, and Davis drew a walk to force home another run, pushing the final to 7-1.
On the Pittsburgh side, Braxton Ashcraft did enough. He went 5.2 innings, allowing 6 hits and 1 earned run while striking out 7 and walking 2. It wasn't dominant, but it was functional — he kept Washington's lineup from doing anything after Wood's first-inning homer, and that was all Pittsburgh needed. Wood's blast — technically the biggest single win-probability swing of the game, moving Washington's home win probability from 31% to 41% — turned out to be a footnote rather than a turning point. The Nationals simply had no follow-up.
Wood finished 1-for-2 with the homer, an RBI, and a run scored, which looks like the lone bright spot in an otherwise flat Washington performance. Reynolds went 2-for-5 with a run, Gonzales went 2-for-3 with an RBI and a run, and Davis drove in 2 despite going just 1-for-3 — a productive night across the board for Pittsburgh's lineup. The Pirates appear to be a team that can manufacture runs in multiple ways, from outright theft on the bases to timely singles in bunches. The Nationals, coming off a series win over Boston, couldn't sustain any momentum here. Pittsburgh wins, 7-1.