Nick Gonzales, Jason Delay homer as Pirates beat Orioles for 1st win of spring training
BRADENTON, Fla. — The Pittsburgh Pirates got their first spring training win, thanks to a fast start and a pair of home runs.
Tucupita Marcano and Canaan Smith-Njigba both drove in a pair of runs as the Pirates jumped out to a five-run lead, and Nick Gonzales and Jason Delay hit solo home runs in a 7-4 victory over the Baltimore Orioles in a Grapefruit League game Tuesday afternoon at LECOM Park.
“Any time, it’s nice to get a win,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. “Sometimes in spring training games there’s different people on the field, and games can get away. The one thing that really stood out today was the group of young players that are going to play in the minor leagues for us contributed. To see those guys in big-league camp contribute is really a positive sign.”
The Pirates got two scoreless innings from starter Luis Ortiz, who allowed two hits and had one strikeout, followed by two more from David Bednar and Jarlin Garcia.
Chavez Young drove in one run and scored two more as the Pirates took an early 5-0 lead. Young’s RBI double put the Pirates on the board in the third inning. Marcano hit a line drive to left field for a two-run single to score Henry Davis and Young to make it 3-0 in the third.
Smith-Njigba’s bases-loaded single up the middle in the fourth scored two runs to give the Pirates a 5-0 lead. Shelton said he was impressed with Smith-Njigba’s at-bats, especially coming off a season-ending broken wrist.
“We saw him just briefly last year in the big leagues, but the things we heard about him when he was in Indianapolis, his ability to control the at-bats,” Shelton said. “He put the barrel on the ball twice. Very encouraging. Good to see. He was under control, which I think was really important.”
Joey Ortiz scored on a Rob Zastryzny wild pitch as the Orioles cut it to 5-1 in the fifth, and they added three more runs on Jordan Westburg’s RBI double and a Franchy Cordero 386-foot, two-run homer to center off Hunter Stratton in the sixth to make it 5-4.
The Pirates got solo homers by Gonzales in the sixth and a 401-foot shot by Delay in the seventh to stretch their lead to 7-4.
Kevin Gorman is a TribLive reporter covering the Pirates. A Baldwin native and Penn State graduate, he joined the Trib in 1999 and has covered high school sports, Pitt football and basketball and was a sports columnist for 10 years. He can be reached at kgorman@triblive.com.
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