Washington Nationals at Pittsburgh Pirates: Final Score & Recap

The Pittsburgh Pirates held off the Washington Nationals 7-6 at PNC Park on September 13, 2023, in a game that was never fully secure until the final out. Pittsburgh jumped on Washington early, plating four runs in the first inning and adding one more in the third and two in the fourth to build a 7-1 lead heading into the middle frames. The Nationals chipped away, getting a run in the fifth and then mounting their most serious threat in the sixth when Dominic Smith launched a home run off Quinn Priester, a swing worth +11.4% in win probability that suddenly made the deficit feel manageable. That rally stalled, however, when Drew Millas grounded into a double play off Ryan Borucki, a sequence that swung win probability by -12.4% and effectively snuffed Washington's best opportunity to cut deeper into the lead.

The ninth inning brought the game's most dramatic sequence and its most consequential individual moments. With Pittsburgh's closer David Bednar on the mound protecting a one-run lead, Keibert Ruiz singled for a +19.0% win-probability swing, the single largest positive play of the game for Washington, briefly injecting real tension into the final frame. But Bednar responded by retiring Lane Thomas on a flyout (-20.7% WP) and striking out CJ Abrams to end it (-22.9% WP), those two outs combining to seal the Pirates' victory. The DiamondIQ model's estimate of Pittsburgh's win probability closed at 100% after Abrams went down swinging. On the mound, Ryan Borucki led all pitchers with +15.4% in win probability added, and Ruiz paced Washington's offense with +19.0% WPA and +0.8 RE24, while Dominic Smith finished with the Nationals' best RE24 at +1.2 despite the losing effort.