Flores Jr.'s 434-Foot Bomb Blows This One Wide Open
Rafael Flores Jr. crushed a 434-foot, three-run homer to center in the fifth inning that swung STL's win probability from 37% all the way down to 11% — a 26-point collapse in a single swing. Pittsburgh walked out of St. Louis with a 6-2 win, and it wasn't particularly close after that.
The game had the feel of a tight one early. Brandon Lowe got Pittsburgh on the board first, taking a pitch 364 feet to right in the first inning for a solo shot. STL answered in the third when Joshua Baez went the other way — 370 feet to left — to knot it at one. Then Nick Gonzales singled to center in the fourth, scoring Jake Mangum, and Pittsburgh had a 2-1 lead it looked ready to protect.
Then came the fifth, and Flores Jr. ended the conversation. His three-run shot to center — 434 feet, a ball that appeared to leave the yard before most of the ballpark had fully processed the swing — scored Reynolds and Cruz and pushed the lead to 5-1. That's the play that buried STL. The win probability swung from 37% to 11% on contact, and the Cardinals never recovered. STL did manufacture a run in the sixth on a messy sequence of errors — Oneil Cruz was charged with a fielding error in center that allowed Fermín to reach and advance, and Walker eventually scored — but it was cosmetic damage at best. Pittsburgh answered in the ninth when Gonzales doubled to left, scoring Lowe and pushing Reynolds to third, making it 6-2 final.
On the mound, the story of the night was how thoroughly Pittsburgh's pitching contained STL outside of that one sloppy inning. Carmen Mlodzinski went 3.1 innings, allowing just 1 hit, 0 earned runs, and 0 walks while striking out two — a clean, efficient start. STL's Brycen Mautz, who came on in relief, looks like the one who absorbed the real damage: 3.0 innings, 5 hits, 4 earned runs, and 8 strikeouts — a brutal line that tells the story of a pitcher who missed bats but couldn't escape trouble when it mattered. Lowe finished 1-for-3 with 2 runs scored, Cruz went 2-for-5, and Mangum added 2 hits of his own. Pittsburgh's lineup was relentless, and on this Saturday in August, they had more than enough.