Ke’Bryan Hayes had two hits and an RBI and Marco Gonzales pitched five strong innings in his return from injury to lift the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates to a 4-1 win against the Chicago White Sox on Friday.
Making his first appearance since mid-April, Gonzales (1-0) allowed one run and seven hits with no walks and four strikeouts. The Pirates reinstated him from the 60-day injured list before the game after he was sidelined due to a strained left forearm muscle.
Pittsburgh won for the fourth time in five games. Chicago has lost five of six.
The White Sox put the first two runners aboard in the eighth but failed to score. Colin Holderman retired Andrew Vaughn on a flyout and then got Luis Robert Jr. to ground into a double play.
David Bednar, who was activated from the 15-day IL after recovering from a left oblique strain, pitched a perfect ninth for his 17th save.
Chicago reliever Jonathan Cannon (1-3) yielded four runs and seven hits in six innings. He walked two and struck out four.
All-Star left-hander Garrett Crochet started the game for the White Sox but pitched only two innings as the club monitors his innings and workload.
Crochet, the major league strikeout leader with 150, fanned four while retiring all six Pirates he faced. He became only the third White Sox pitcher to collect 150 strikeouts before the All-Star break, joining Dylan Cease (2022) and Chris Sale (2015).
Cannon, a rookie who was coming off tossing six innings of one-run ball in Miami on Sunday, retired six of the first seven men he faced before allowing a pair of runs each in the fifth and sixth innings.
Jared Triolo grounded an RBI single to tie the game at 1 before Michael A. Taylor gave Pittsburgh the lead for good with a run-scoring sacrifice fly.
Nick Gonzales (double) and Hayes (single) added to the advantage with consecutive RBI hits with one out in the sixth. Cannon escaped further trouble by inducing Joey Bart to ground into a double play.
Chicago opened the scoring on Robert’s RBI single in the third. Paul DeJong singled twice for the White Sox.
–Field Level Media
