Dillon Peters tosses 5 scoreless innings as Pirates hold on to beat Reds

The Cincinnati Reds had pummeled the Pittsburgh Pirates nine times in 10 meetings this season, scoring double-digit runs in half of them, so Derek Shelton was well aware that their lineup had some punch.

With the Pirates facing the top of the Reds’ order in the bottom of the ninth and three hitters who had 20 or more home runs, Shelton surmised that it could spell trouble when their six-run lead shrunk to two.

“I don’t think any lead is safe off these guys,” Shelton said of the Reds.

With two outs, Nick Castellanos drove Chris Stratton’s first-pitch fastball 421 feet into the center field seats. But Stratton got Joey Votto to swing at a slider low and inside to preserve the Pirates’ 6-5 win Tuesday night before an announced crowd of 8,896 at PNC Park.

“He went through the heart of a really good lineup right there,” Shelton said of Stratton, who earned his fifth save on the same day David Bednar was placed on the 10-day injured list with a right oblique strain. “He’s pitched in leverage innings and he’s pitched in high-leverage sevenths and eighths. Now, we’ve moved him into the ninth, and I think tonight is probably the highest-leverage ninth inning he got, because he got multiple guys 20-plus homers and a lineup that has been really good against, and he executed pitches.”

Beating the Reds (75-70) required a strong start. Cincinnati had outscored the Pirates, 82-26, in going 9-1 against their NL Central foe this season. The lone Pirates win was a 7-2 victory on May 11, so it helped to score three runs in each of the first and fifth innings against a team that entered the game in a three-way tie for a wild card spot.

“We know they’re in the wild card hunt, this and that,” said Pirates outfielder Ben Gamel, who went 2 for 4 wtih an RBI. “But winning baseball games is fun. It doesn’t matter who you’re playing.”

It was the fifth win in the past seven games for the Pirates (53-91), as left-hander Dillon Peters (1-2) allowed five hits and one walk with five strikeouts in five scoreless innings for his first win.

“We’re going out there to attack hitters and stay ahead of hitters,” Peters said. “When you do that, you get ahead, you stay ahead and you’re gonna have some success against any lineup. So, no, it didn’t add extra fuel to the fire. We just knew what we wanted to do to those guys and just kept throwing it in there.”

On the same day he was announced the team’s nominee for the Roberto Clemente Award, Pirates catcher Jacob Stallings went 2 for 4, driving in runs with a single in the first and a double in the fifth. Stallings did so batting behind first baseman Yoshi Tsutsugo, who also went 2 for 4 with RBI singles in the first and fifth.

Reds lefty Wade Miley (12-6) had pitched 13 scoreless innings in two previous starts against the Pirates this season, a 14-1 win on April 6 and a 10-0 win on Aug. 6. This time, he gave up five earned runs on 10 hits and two walks while striking out one batter in 4 1/3 innings.

The Pirates got to Miley early, scoring three runs in the first inning. Ke’Bryan Hayes hit a leadoff single, advanced to second on Kevin Newman’s sacrifice bunt and scored on Tsutsugo’s single to right for a 1-0 lead. Tsutsugo was caught leading off first but Stallings singled to right to score Bryan Reynolds to make it 2-0. Gamel drove in Stallings to make it 3-0.

The Pirates padded their lead, scoring three more runs in the bottom of the fifth off Miley. Newman started it off with a single and scored on Tsutsugo’s single to left-center. Reds left fielder Aristides Aquino’s throw to the plate hit the top of Reynolds’ helmet and skipped toward the home dugout, allowing Reynolds to score for a 5-0 lead. Stallings doubled down the left field line, scoring Tsutsugo to make it 6-0.

“We didn’t miss our pitch. We grinded through at-bats,” Gamel said. “Key got us off with a bang, got us going. We put a three-spot up in the first inning, just kept building it and kept grinding at-bats. We pushed six across on them.”

Shelton said the long inning, combined with Peters throwing 80 pitches in his second start since coming off the IL, prompted him to turn to the bullpen. That move backfired when the Reds rallied for four runs on five hits against reliever Nick Mears.

It started with a bases-loaded, two-run bloop single to right by Tucker Barnhart. After a mound visit, Shelton left Mears in to face Mike Moustakas, who singled to load the bases for Jonathan India. Hayes fielded India’s grounder to third and tried to turn a double play but India beat Wilmer Difo’s throw from second to score Max Shrock and cut it to 6-3. Kyle Farmer followed with a fly ball to right field that sailed past a diving Gamel to score Barnhart to make it 6-4.

While Reds relievers Justin Wilson, Luis Cessa and Amir Garrett retired the final 12 batters, Pirates lefty Chasen Shreve pitched two perfect innings to set the stage for the ninth. Where Shelton used only one pinch hitter in the game, Reds manager David Bell used five.

“You look at their lineup all the way down, the way they’ve constructed their September roster – and I think you saw David use his whole September roster today – he’s got seven guys on the bench, so he can mix and match,” Shelton said. “So that kind of went into how we used the bullpen, too, knowing he was going to be aggressive with that. They’re a good offensive club, and we’ve seen it time and time again going back to the first series there, so we just have to keep playing.

“I think the big part of that game was Chasen Shreve. To go through two innings with what he did, that picked us up huge and he executed pitches.”

That brought the Pirates to a save situation to a team, potential trouble for a team without a closer. Stratton got India swinging, Asdrubal Cabrera to hit a fly to Gamel at the Clemente Wall before Castellanos hit his 29th home run to cut it to 6-5. Stratton recovered, getting Votto to strike out for the final out and a long-awaited win over the Reds.

“To get through that and finish that off,” Shelton said, “that was really impressive.”