Washington Nationals at Pittsburgh Pirates: Final Score & Recap
Line Score
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WSH | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| PIT | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | - | 2 | 5 | 1 |
The Story
The Pittsburgh Pirates shut out the Washington Nationals 2-0 on September 14, 2023, at PNC Park, with Mitch Keller and the bullpen holding Washington to just two hits across nine innings. The DiamondIQ model entered the game favoring Pittsburgh at 57% and closed at 100% as the Pirates authored a dominant defensive performance despite committing one error, while the Nationals' two errors compounded their offensive struggles.
Pittsburgh built its lead through two solo home runs off Nationals starter Josiah Gray. Jack Suwinski opened the scoring with a home run in the second inning, a swing that shifted win probability 7.4 percentage points in the Pirates' favor. Alfonso Rivas III then extended the lead with another solo shot in the fifth, a blow that carried an 11.7-point win-probability swing and represented the single most consequential play of the game by that measure. Washington's best opportunity to answer came in the seventh inning, when Joey Meneses drew a walk off Keller to nudge the Nationals' win probability up 4.2 points, but Dominic Smith's subsequent strikeout erased that flicker, costing Washington 4.5 points of win probability and effectively sealing the outcome.
Keller was the game's dominant individual performer, finishing with a model-leading 40.9 percentage points of win-probability added. Rivas and Suwinski paced Pittsburgh's offense, posting WPA figures of plus-7.9 and plus-7.8 respectively, with Suwinski also contributing a plus-1.3 RE24, the highest run-environment figure among position players. Relievers Jordan Weems and David Bednar closed things out cleanly, adding 6.9 and 6.3 WPA points respectively as Pittsburgh completed the shutout.