Pirates battle weather, early deficit in loss to Brewers

PITTSBURGH -- A packed house. A weather delay without rain. A five-run second inning. A flirtation with a perfect game. A six-run eighth inning. A weather delay with rain that spawned a rainbow across the Pittsburgh skyline. These were the ingredients in the Pirates’ 11-8 loss to the Brewers on Saturday afternoon at PNC Park, one of the longest and strangest games the black and gold will play this season.

“They continued to battle, so I’m really proud of how they continued to go, regardless of the circumstances,” said manager Derek Shelton.

Added Brewers manager Craig Counsell, "It was just a long day. Kind of a wild one. It’s kind of usual for Pittsburgh, actually. Usually once a year something like this happens here. We came out on top and did enough to win. It ended up being a good day."

The abnormality began well before Johan Oviedo delivered the game’s first pitch. Roughly half-an-hour before the scheduled 4:05 p.m. start, the Pirates announced that the game would begin in a brief delay due to “expectant weather conditions in the surrounding area.” Despite the concerns, the conditions remained completely dry for the entirety of the 41-minute weather delay.

When Oviedo finally did take the mound, the right-hander didn’t have the same sharp stuff from his previous outing against the Marlins, one in which he threw seven innings of one-run ball. The Brewers scratched across a run in the first, then piled on five runs in the second, sprinting out to a six-run deficit. Oviedo found a bit of a groove in innings three through five, but was pulled after he couldn’t retire the only two batters that he faced in the sixth. His final line: five-plus innings, eight earned runs.

Oviedo has dealt with a weather delay before, albeit one much longer than Saturday’s. On April 30, Oviedo’s start against the Nationals was delayed by two hours and 26 minutes due to weather. Oviedo had a 3.03 ERA going into that start, but proceeded to allow seven earned runs across 2 1/3 innings.

“It’s just something you have to go with,” Oviedo said. “It’s not an excuse. You have to make the adjustment and try to figure it out. It’s part of the game and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

On the other side, Corbin Burnes flirted with perfection. Less than a week after Domingo Germán threw the 24th perfect game in Major League history, Burnes took his own shot at history, retiring the first 15 batters he faced before walking Jared Triolo and Ji Hwan Bae to begin the sixth inning. Burnes would lose his no-hit and shutout bids with one swing, too, when Jack Suwinski delivered a two-run, two-out single to put the Pirates in the run and hit column.

Still, Milwaukee commanded the ballgame. After Raimel Tapia hit a solo home run off Roansy Contreras in the seventh inning, the Brewers owned a commanding 11-2 lead. The Brew Crew needed six outs to protect a nine-run lead, but the Pirates landed their own haymaker with a sixth-run eighth inning, slashing the deficit to three runs. Pittsburgh still had a sizable deficit to overcome, but the energy in the dugouts, in the ballpark had shifted.

Then, the second delay.

After right-hander Yerry De Los Santos recorded the first out in the top of the ninth inning, rain began to fall and players headed for their clubhouses. If the game began on time, the game would’ve likely ended well-before the rain began to pour upon the North Shore. Alas, the Brewers and Pirates would endure their second rain delay of the game.

Some fans, justifiably so, elected to leave the ballpark. Others fled to seats underneath the overhangs or onto the concourse. A small group of children climbed onto the third-base dugout, running and stomping from one side to the other. Another group of fans stood proudly behind the first-base dugout, fully embracing the downpour.

The Pirates still trailed by three runs when both teams returned to the diamond 33 minutes later, but any momentum that had been generated with that six-run eighth inning seemingly dissipated. After sending 10 batters to the plate in the eighth, the Pirates were retired, in order, in the ninth.

“You can always say it kind of affected the momentum, but we were still ready to go,” said outfielder Josh Palacios. “We still were ready to push forward. Everybody sat down and slowed things down, maybe had a little less fans here because people got rained on. Just couldn’t pull it out at the end.”