Pirates salvage finale in St. Louis

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Yasmani Grandal homered, Nick Gonzales drove in the winning run with a single in the eighth inning, and the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals 3-2 on Thursday night to snap a three-game losing streak.

Pirates starter Luis Ortiz allowed two runs on five hits and had seven strikeouts in six innings.

“My whole focus today was to get weak contact, and the strikeouts showed up,” Ortiz said via an interpreter. “That was not in my mind to strike people out, but making quality pitches, that’s what happened and we’re pretty happy.”

Carmen Mlodzinski (4-5) and Dennis Santana each tossed a scoreless inning, and Aroldis Chapman pitched the ninth to earn his 10th save in 15 chances. It was Chapman’s 331st career save moving him past John Wetteland for the 16th most in major league history.

“He’s had a heck of a career,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. “He’s making a very strong case to be a Hall of Famer. He’s the all-time left-handed leader as a reliever in strikeouts. This guy just continues to get better with age. He’s very impressive.”

Cardinals starter Erick Fedde allowed one run on four hits and struck out three.

“There’s still some room to improve on my movement,” Fedde said. “I felt like things were really late today just in the sense of kind of the swings I was getting. They seemed a little more defensive than they have been, and to that means my stuff’s going to be late and a little harder to see. That’s a great sign.”

St. Louis (77-76) fell to eight games behind the New York Mets (85-68) in the National League wild-card race, and will be mathematically eliminated from postseason contention with either one more loss or a Mets win.

Gonzales singled up the middle off Ryan Fernandez who entered the game after JoJo Romero (7-3) walked pinch hitter Connor Joe with two outs in the top of the eighth.

“Someone told me about how DJ Lemahieu kind of takes every AB the same, how it’s the most important AB no matter what the count, no matter what the situation,” Gonzales said. “I just try to do that the best that I can so every single at-bat I have kind of feels the same. Obviously, emotions get going, but I’m just trying my best to just make every single AB as important as the next and trying to lock in and not trying to do too much.”

Grandal hit his eighth home run of the season to right field in the seventh inning to tie the game 2-2.

Brendan Donovan hit an RBI single to left in the fourth inning to tie the game 1-1, then drove in another run with a double to the left-center field gap in the sixth inning to give the Cardinals a 2-1 lead. He now has a hit in all 18 home games he has played against Pittsburgh to start his career.

Gonzales lined a triple to right field that Jordan Walker had trouble corralling and scored on Bryan De La Cruz’s sacrifice fly to give Pittsburgh a 1-0 lead in the fourth inning.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Pirates: C Endy Rodríguez (right elbow surgery) batted third as the designated hitter for Indianapolis in a rehab appearance at St. Paul.