Jared Triolo delivers winning RBI in 12th, Jose Hernandez earns save as Pirates win opener

The Pittsburgh Pirates got an extra-inning win on Opening Day thanks to a hit by a player in his first season opener and a save by a pitcher who wasn’t even supposed to be on the active roster.

Jared Triolo singled in the winning run in the top of the 12th inning, and left-hander Jose Hernandez finished off the Miami Marlins for a 6-5 victory in the season opener Thursday afternoon at loanDepot park.

The Pirates trailed by as many as three runs and never led until the final inning, mounting a comeback behind home runs by Edward Olivares and Oneil Cruz and a bullpen that allowed one hit over the final 6¹⁄₃ innings.

“We came out with the win because we continued to play,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said on the SportsNet Pittsburgh postgame show. “You play for 27 outs. I’m not smart enough to do the math — I don’t know how many there were — but we played through the whole game, which was important.”

Triolo delivered his heroics with two outs in the 12th. With automatic runner Ke’Bryan Hayes at second base and Cruz at first after being intentionally walked, Triolo hit a bloop single to right field to score Hayes for the go-ahead run. Shortstop Tim Anderson cut off the throw to the plate, which caught Triolo between first and second, but Anderson turned to throw Cruz out at home to end the rally.

“It was a kind of a long one up to that point at the plate for me,” Triolo, who was 1 for 6, told SportsNet Pittsburgh in an on-field interview. “But they always preach that you never know when your at-bat is coming. Luckily, it squirted over the infield and we scored that run there and held them in the bottom half.”

Hernandez, added to the Opening Day roster only after Roansy Contreras was placed on the MLB paternity leave list, earned his first career save by recording the final three outs. With the tying run at third, he got Josh Bell to ground out to third and Bryan De La Cruz to fly out to the warning track in right field to end the game.

“To come in and get it — I mean, he wasn’t here 24 hours ago — it was a really good situation,” Shelton said.

The Marlins took a 5-2 lead against Pirates starter Mitch Keller, who signed a five-year, $77 million contract extension on Feb. 23. Keller allowed four earned runs on seven hits and two walks while striking out three on 85 pitches in 5 2/3 innings.

The Marlins scored a pair of runs off Keller in the second inning, the first of two mishaps at second base while attempting to turn a double play. Jazz Chisholm Jr. scored on a grounder to short by Jesus Sanchez for a 1-0 lead. Cruz fielded Sanchez’s grounder and fed Triolo at second base, but Triolo lost the ball during the transfer while trying to turn a double play and both runners were safe. Anderson followed with a double to the right-field corner to score Burger and make it 2-0.

The Pirates tied it up in the third, when Bryan Reynolds sent an elevated 2-1 sinker 406 feet to left-center for a two-run home run.

Miami scored two more in the third for a 4-2 edge, as the Pirates failed to turn another double play. After Bell’s leadoff single, De La Cruz hit a comebacker to Keller, but his throw to second for the forceout pulled Triolo off the bag and prevented him from turning two.

Chisholm doubled to put runners on second and third, and Jake Burger followed with a two-run single to left as Chisholm beat Reynolds’ throw from left and slid past catcher Henry Davis’ tag attempt at the plate.

Burger drove in another run for the Marlins for a 5-2 lead in the fifth. Bell drew a leadoff walk, advanced to second on a single by De La Cruz and to third when Chisholm flied out to right and scored on Burger’s sacrifice fly to left.

Marlins left-hander Jesus Luzardo had eight strikeouts in five innings, and the Pirates loaded the bases against righty George Soriano but lefty Andrew Nardi got Cruz and Triolo looking at called third strikes.

Shelton had righty-hitting Olivares, acquired from Kansas City in the offseason, pinch-hit for the lefty Tellez to face Nardi in the seventh. In his Pirates debut, Olivares drove an 0-1 four-seamer 413 feet to left-center for a home run to cut it to 5-3.

It was the third career pinch-hit homer for Olivares, who became the third Pirate to hit a pinch-hit homer on Opening Day. He joins Nate McLouth (2007) and John Vander Wal (2000), who also did so in his Pirates debut. Olivares became the first player to homer in his Pirates debut since Ke’Bryan Hayes on Sept. 1, 2020 at the Chicago Cubs.

After Michael A. Taylor singled to center, the Marlins replaced Nardi with Anthony Bender. Reynolds hit a one-out double that bounced over the right-field fence, putting runners on second and third, before Hayes drew a walk to load the bases for Andrew McCutchen.

McCutchen, sitting one homer shy of his career 300th, hit a chopper to short that scored Taylor to trim the deficit to 5-4. But Bender got Davis swinging at a 2-2 sinker for a strikeout to end the rally.

Cruz started the eighth by connecting on a Sixto Sanchez 96-mph fastball on the outside corner for a 384-foot, opposite-field blast to tie the score at 5-5.

It marked his second consecutive Opening Day with a homer — he hit a solo shot in the 5-4 win at Cincinnati last year — to become the fifth player in team history to accomplish the feat.

The Pirates had a scoring chance in the ninth against lefty Tanner Scott, who walked Joe and Hayes but got McCutchen looking at a called third strike on a full-count slider at the bottom of the strike zone. Davis worked a full count before hitting a line drive that Burger snagged at third.

The Pirates had two runners thrown out at home plate by Bell in extra innings. They started the 10th with Davis on second base as the automatic runner. Davis tried to score when Burger’s throw from third to first skipped past Bell. But Bell’s throw to the plate beat Davis, who was caught between the bases and tagged out.

Taylor started the 11th inning at second base as the automatic runner and advanced to third on Joe’s groundout to second but was out at home when Reynolds hit a grounder to Bell, who made another perfect throw to catcher Nick Fortes at the plate.

The Pirates prevented a run in the bottom of the 10th, thanks to a spectacular stretch by Joe at first base. With De La Cruz at second, the Pirates intentionally walked Chisholm and that set up a double-play ball on Burger’s grounder to second. Cruz’s throw was low and wide of the bag but Joe stretched and scooped it.

With closer David Bednar not available, righty Luis Ortiz (1-0) pitched a pair of scoreless innings to earn the win. With one out and runners on the corners in the bottom of the 11th but got pinch hitter Jonah Bride to ground into a 5-4-3 double play to end the inning.

Then Hernandez came in and finished it off for the Pirates.

“That’s crazy,” Keller said. “You never know when the opportunity is going to come. His happened to be today, in Game 1 of 162. We couldn’t be happier for him. He came up in a big spot. Same with Ortiz. Coming in and shutting it down was exceptional. Everyone that came in from the bullpen was just amazing, as expected. It was awesome.”