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Pittsburgh Pirates batter Angels bullpen in 10-9 win

Starling Marte was 2 of 6 at the plate against the Angels while scoring twice and adding an RBI in the Pittsburgh Pirates' 10-9 extra-inning victory.
(Victor Decolongon / Getty Images)
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For the first 7 1/3 innings Sunday, Joe Blanton was brilliant.

In what should have been the final inning, Ernesto Frieri was not.

And it was that second fact that wound up haunting the Angels on Sunday after the Pittsburgh Pirates -- twice down to their final strike -- rallied for seven runs in their final two at-bats in a wild 10-9 win.

BOX SCORE: Pittsburgh 10, Angels 9 (10 inn.)

Frieri came on to protect a 6-3 lead in the ninth but walked the first batter and gave up a single to the second. After an out pinch-hitter Andrew McCutchen hit a potential double-play grounder to third. But he just beat the relay to first, driving in a run and -- more importantly -- keeping the inning alive.

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Another pinch-hitter, Russell Martin, followed by driving a two-strike pitch off the wall in left field, narrowly missing a game-tying home run but driving in McCutchen to pull the Pirates to within 6-5.

Starling Marte was next and he also was down to his last strike before dunking a single into left-center to score Martin and send the game into extra innings.

The Pirates won the game in equally impropable fashion an inning later, loading the bases on a double and two walks before Travis Snider hit a sinking liner to left field that skipped under J.B. Shuck’s glove and rolled to the wall, clearing the bases.

Martin, who didn’t even enter the game until there were two outs in the ninth, scored Snider two batters later with his second hit and second RBI in as many innings.

The Angels put together a rally of their own in the 10th, scoring three times. But Mike Trout struck out to end the game with the tying and winning runs in scoring position.

But if the day ended bad for the Angels, it didn’t start all that way either.

For the third straight game Pittsburgh’s Pedro Alvarez opened the scoring with a solo home run into the right-field bleachers, this time in the first inning.

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The Angels appeared to have Alvarez retired after left fielder Mike Trout made a difficult running catch of his looping fly ball in foul territory. But when Trout collided with a sliding Alberto Callaspo, who was chasing the foul from third base, the ball squirted free, keeping Alvarez’s at-bat alive.

He homered on the next pitch, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise since it was his seventh hit and fourth homer in 10 career at-bats against Blanton.

A freak play cost the Pirates another run in the second. Neil Walker opened the inning with a single and was still at first two outs later when Tony Sanchez, making his first major-league plate appearance, drove a ball to the wall in right field.

Third base coach Nick Leyva waved Walker around third but when the ball became wedged in a gap below the out-of-town scoreboard, Sanchez was credited with a ground-rule double and Walker was sent back to third -- where he stayed when Michael McKenry flew out to end the inning.

Pittsburgh’s lead was short-lived, though, with the Angels scoring five times in the second inning with the help of two Pirate errors and a hard slide by the Angels’ Peter Bourjos at second.

The first run came home when Walker, at second, tried to make a scoop throw to first on Erick Aybar’s high hopper, only to see the ball bounce off toward the first-base dugout instead. A fielding error by Alvarez a batter later made it 2-1 Angels and then two more runners scored -- one from second -- when Bourjos slid hard into second on a Mike Trout grounder, breaking up a potential inning-ending double play.

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The play also proved costly to the Angels when Bourjos, hitting .375 in June, had to come out of the game an inning later with a left thumb injury.

The Angel infield helped the Pirates get two of those runs back in the third with Howie Kendrick’s two-out error leading to a pair of unearned runs. But Blanton didn’t allow another Pirate to reach base, retiring the final 14 men he faced.

That allowed the Angels to add what appeared to be an insurance run in the fourth on a walk and stolen base by Shuck, followed by a run-scoring single from Brad Hawpe. For Hawpe, who came on when Bourjos went out, the RBI was his first in the majors in more than two years.

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