Blue Jays beat Pirates in final game before MLB suspends spring training
In one of the final games before MLB suspended spring training, the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-5, on Thursday at LECOM Park in Bradenton, Fla.
MLB announced during the game it decided to suspend spring training games and the start of the 2020 season by at least two weeks “due to the national emergency created by the coronavirus pandemic.”
Joe Musgrove allowed nine hits and three earned runs in 41⁄3 innings, striking out four without a walk. He pitched three scoreless innings before surrendering a home run to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and an RBI single by Forrest Wall in the fourth.
The Pirates jumped to a 3-0 lead. In the first, Bryan Reynolds scored when Adam Frazier doubled to left and Wall committed an error. Frazier, who reached third on the error, scored on Josh Bell’s groundout to second base to make it 2-0.
Reynolds, who went 2 for 3, homered to right in the third for a 3-0 lead.
The Blue Jays tied it when Bo Bichette homered to right off Geoff Hartlieb in the fifth and took the lead on Brock Lundquist’s two-run single in the sixth.
Kevin Newman’s single to right-center scored pinch-runner Jared Oliva to cut it to 5-4 in the bottom of the sixth, but the inning ended when Jason Martin was thrown out at third.
The Blue Jays added two runs in the eighth on a Santiago Espinal double and a Kevin Smith single for a 7-4 lead. Pirates shortstop Cole Tucker homered in the eighth to cut it to 7-5.
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Kevin Gorman is a TribLive reporter covering the Pirates. A Baldwin native and Penn State graduate, he joined the Trib in 1999 and has covered high school sports, Pitt football and basketball and was a sports columnist for 10 years. He can be reached at kgorman@triblive.com.
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