By recent Cleveland standards, the first four innings Danny Salazar pitched Sunday afternoon at PNC Park were nothing special.
Not that the 25-year-old right-hander wasn’t dominant in retiring 12 of the Pirates' first 14 batters, seven by swinging strikeout. It’s just that when a starting rotation has had three legitimate perfect-game bids in the past week – plus a complete-game loss Saturday – the excellent can appear routine.
However, elevated bar or not, Salazar came crashing down from those heights during a five-run fifth inning that pushed the Pirates to a 5-3 come-from-behind victory.
“We finally got some guys on base and got him into trouble,” Neil Walker said of Salazar. “We knew we had to stay aggressive because he was coming right at us.”
NOTICE: If this is your first time logging in since the new site was launched July 30, you will need to create a new password. It’s simple. Click ‘Lost Your Password?’ and follow instructions from there.
