Brandon Lowe, Henry Davis each homer to lead Pirates over Mariners
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PITTSBURGH -- Brandon Lowe hit his team-leading 19th home run of the season and Henry Davis had a two-run blast as the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Seattle Mariners 5-1 on Thursday.
Lowe's homer was a solo shot off Bryce Miller with one out in the bottom of the first inning to open the scoring. He added an RBI single in a two-run eighth.
Lowe also leads the Pirates with 51 runs batted in after being acquired from Tampa Bay in an offseason trade.
"We bent, we didn't break," Pirates manager Don Kelly said. "Found a way to make some huge pitches when we needed to. Sisk coming in and coming out of the sixth inning, (Montgomery) getting out of the seventh and then (Montgomery) and Soto had the clean eighth and ninth. I thought our bullpen did a really good job."
Davis entered the game with a .136 batting average. However, the catcher's two-run home run, his sixth, in the third inning pushed the Pirates' lead to 3-1. Davis finished 2 for 3 to raise his batting average up to .148.
Miller (3-2) tied his career high with 11 strikeouts in just 5ª innings. Miller also had no walks as the American League West leaders lost two of three in the series.
Rookie Bubba Chandler (3-7) pitched 5• innings for the win, allowing one run and five hits while striking out four and walking three. Evan Sisk, Yohan Ramirez, Mason Montgomery and Gregory Soto combined for 3ª scoreless relief innings.
"It was a great series -- that's a really good team," Chandler said. "They'll do really well this year."
J.P. Crawford singled home the Mariners' lone run in fifth inning. Ryan O'Hearn had an RBI single in the eighth for the Pirates, who are now 41-40 at the midway point in the season.
"We're moving in the right direction," Lowe said of the Pirates at the season's halfway point. "Obviously, there are some games that we've lost in situations we probably shouldn't have. As a whole, we've lost them on every side of the ball. I think everyone in here takes them as learning experiences. ... Hopefully we've gotten some of those out of the way, and we can start playing some really good baseball here and have some fun here in the second half."
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The Pirates put first baseman Spencer Horwitz on the 10-day injured list with a left hamstring strain suffered in Wednesday night's 11-1 win over Seattle.
The team called up Jack Branigan from Double-A Altoona to take his place on the roster. He was selected by the Pirates out of Notre Dame in the 2022 MLB Draft in the third round.
Since June 16, Brannigan has batted .320 with two dubles, four home runs and nine RBIs. His OPS is 1.273. He is ranked 27th in the Pirates top 30 Minor League team rankings.
Up next
Pirates: Open a three-game series against visiting Cincinnati on Friday night. The Pirates are starting Paul Skenes (6-7, 2,86) while LHP Andrew Abbott (5-4, 3.83) gets the ball for the Reds.