Major League Baseball’s (MLB) Pittsburgh Pirates’ Bae Ji-hwan (24) hit safely for the third straight game but couldn’t prevent his team from losing.
Bae went 1-for-3 with a run scored, 안전놀이터 a walk, and a stolen base in the eighth spot in the lineup against the Oakland Athletics at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Monday (Aug. 8).
With his third straight game with a hit, Bae’s season batting average increased slightly from .275 to .276.
The hit came in the first at-bat of the third inning.
Bae led off with an infield single to shortstop. Two batters later, he was thrown out at second base on Brian Reynolds’ grounder to the second baseman.
He was thrown out at second base on a grounder to shortstop in the bottom of the fourth inning and came back to lead off the seventh inning with a single to shortstop.
In his final at-bat, in the bottom of the ninth, Bae led off with a walk and moved to second on a single. He advanced to second on the next batter’s sacrifice bunt, moved to third on Andrew McCutchen’s grounder to third, and scored on Reynolds’ RBI single.
Despite Bae’s heroics, Pittsburgh fell to 5-9.
It started in the first inning. Pittsburgh scored seven runs in the first inning as starter Roanj Contreras failed to contain the Oakland bats.
Pittsburgh scored three unearned runs in the sixth inning to keep the momentum going, but two runs in the seventh put the game out of reach. They scored one run in the bottom of the seventh and one in the bottom of the ninth, but it wasn’t enough.
The loss was the second straight for Pittsburgh, which is now 32-29 on the season. It was especially painful for the Pirates to be swept by Oakland, which has the lowest winning percentage in both leagues this season.
