Pittsburgh Pirates’ Bae Ji-hwan (24) struggled against a former Cy Young Award pitcher.
Bae went 0-for-3 with a walk and a strikeout in the ninth inning of the Pirates’ home game against the Milwaukee Brewers at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., on Friday (June 5). Unable to build on the previous day’s multi-hit performance (4-for-2 with one RBI), Bae’s season batting average dropped from .243 to .240.
Bae struggled with the cutter of Milwaukee starter Corbin Burns, the 2021 National League (NL) Cy Young Award winner. In his first at-bat with the bases loaded in the bottom of the third inning, Bae hit a four-pitch body cutter with a 2-1 count and retired on a grounder to third base.스포츠토토
Facing Burns again in the bottom of the fifth inning with the bases loaded, Bae hit a two-seam cutter on a 1-0 pitch and grounded out to shortstop.
After two consecutive at-bats against Burns’ cutter, Bae was called out on an unfair pitch on his third at-bat with the bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh. Facing reliever Harvey Milner after Burns went down, Bae made three foul pitches to get into a 1-2 count. Bae watched as a five-pitch curveball went deep in the zone, but the umpire called it a strike. Bae was disappointed but had to leave the batter’s box.
The umpire called the fifth pitch a strike. / Photo: MLB.com Gameday Captures
Despite Bae Ji-Hwan’s silence, Pittsburgh got a tying two-run double from Zack Swinski in the fourth inning, a walk-off single from Keebrian Hayes in the fifth and an RBI single from Andrew McCutchen in the sixth to score Burns and win 4-2. Pittsburgh starter Luis Ortiz picked up his fourth win of the season with six innings of five-hit, two-run quality work, and the bullpen closed out the final three innings.
Pittsburgh, now 64-74 (.464 winning percentage) on the season, remains seven games behind the NL wild-card cutoff. Meanwhile, with the loss, NL Central-leading Milwaukee is 76-61 (.555) and trails the second-place Chicago Cubs (74-64 (.536) by 2.5 games.