Historic night of homers exhausts Pirates’ supply of fireworks

PITTSBURGH -- It’s been nearly 77 years since the last time the Pirates homered at home as many times as they did Friday against the Mets. So much so that the team’s allotment of celebratory fireworks for the day was exhausted.

Things started getting Rowdy in the fourth when Rowdy Tellez went deep to right. They got Rowdier with five more unanswered Pirates home runs, before reaching pinnacle Rowdiest when Tellez put one in the bullpen for an eighth-inning grand slam, the final salvo of a seven-homer performance for the home club, who beat the Mets, 14-2, at PNC Park.

“It’s a great offensive game for us,” said Bryan Reynolds, who homered twice, including a grand slam. “I think we can build off it and keep it rolling, just keep going strong for the rest of the year.”

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The seven home runs tied a franchise record, previously done four times: May 26, 2023 at Seattle; Aug. 20, 2003 at St. Louis; Aug. 16, 1947 against the Cardinals; and June 6, 1894 at Boston. This was the first time the team hit multiple grand slams in a seven-homer performance, and the first time it hit two grand slams in a game since April 16, 1996.

The most crucial of those homers came off of Reynolds’ bat in the fifth. After Tellez and Jack Suwinski erased an early 2-0 deficit in the fourth inning with solo shots, Reynolds had a chance to break the tie with two runners in scoring position and nobody out.

However, Michael A. Taylor strayed a bit too far off third base and was picked off. It could have been a momentum swing back in the Mets’ favor, but Reynolds got a hold of a fastball from Luis Severino and sent it out to right-center field.

Two innings later, Severino loaded the bases and handed the ball over to lefty Jake Diekman. Reynolds went to the other batter’s box and deposited another home run to right-center, this time a grand slam.

Reynolds was the Pirates’ hottest hitter in June, keeping with his tradition of clobbering the baseball in the third month of the season. June ends whenever Reynolds says it ends, not the calendar.

“What is it, June 38th?” joked the left fielder.

Tellez was the team’s second-hottest hitter in that month, and he was fine conceding that it was probably Reynolds’ night since he had four hits and an extra RBI over Tellez. According to STATS, they became the first pair of teammates in MLB history to hit multiple home runs and a grand slam each in the same game.

“That’s a good thing,” Reynolds said about sharing the spotlight with Tellez. “That gets overshadowed a little bit. That was a great offensive game for us.”

It wasn’t just those two. Suwinski, who had a rough first half of the season, is continuing to swing a better bat of late, homering and tagging another ball 106.8 mph. Yasmani Grandal, who Derek Shelton opined had been taking better swings of late, was rewarded with a double and a home run. Even Taylor, who had just five hits in the month of June, homered as part of a four-hit night.

“Michael, I mean, outstanding,” Shelton lauded. “Four hits, one of them was to center, the other three were to right, the homer to right -- that's good to see him staying on the ball. Really impressive.”

Getting that trio going offensively would lengthen the lineup and help make the offensive output more consistent, and a big game from each certainly doesn’t hurt. That doesn’t mean they haven’t contributed, as Tellez would point out.

“Michael A.'s been a great defender, Yaz has been calling great games back there,” Tellez said. “I think they've been impacting the game.”

But if they hit on top of that to support the team’s starting pitching -- like Paul Skenes, who tossed seven innings of two-run ball with eight strikeouts -- it would go a long way to improving in the second half of the season.

And it would probably mean more boisterous sellout crowds, like the 37,037 who were in attendance Friday.

“You could feel the energy in the ballpark tonight,” said Shelton. “They were into it. Even late in the game when it was 14-2, they were still up on their feet. You get a situation like that sometimes where crowds will leave and they were all here and cheering, and I thought that was really cool."