Final: Phillies 12, Pirates 6
J.T. Realmuto didn’t start at catcher in Thursday evening’s series opener against the Pittsburgh Pirates, and early on, it looked like the game may already be in the loss column by the time he got a chance to pinch hit.
However, the Phillies battled back from a 6-0 deficit Thursday, and Realmuto turned in one of his best games off the bench to help the Phillies to their 79th win of the season.
The Pirates jumped out to an early lead in the top of the second inning.
In his first major league at-bat, Pirates pitcher Connor Overton blooped a ball into left field that landed in between Andrew McCutchen, Freddy Galvis and Didi Gregorius, allowing two runs to score:
The biggest blow of the inning came off the bat of Ke’Bryan Hayes, who tagged Nola for a three-run home run, giving the Pirates a 5-0 lead:
An inning later, Colin Moran seemingly put the game out of reach by hitting a 432-foot home run off of Nola, eliciting boos from the rain-soaked crowd at Citizens Bank Park:
But after seeing just 14 pitches in the bottom of the second inning, the Phillies bats woke up in a big way in the home half of the third.