PITTSBURGH — In his first trip back to this city he loved living in, which is where he has often said he really began to learn the art of pitching, Joe Musgrove was five days removed from throwing the first no-hitter in Padres history.
He acknowledged, after throwing 81 pitches and allowing a run in four innings here a little more than a year ago, that it had been like pitching under water.
Musgrove returned this weekend, and Sunday showed his former team what he can do now while pitching for his hometown club. The big right-hander allowed only a seventh-inning run before the Padres bullpen weathered an eighth-inning crisis and finished out a 5-2 victory at PNC Park.
After Tim Hill cleaned up Robert Suarez's mess in the eighth inning and Taylor Rogers pitched a perfect ninth to earn his fourth save in five days, the Padres had secured a winning road trip before they boarded chartered buses for the final leg.
Rain delayed the start of Sunday's game 82 minutes before the Padres won for the fifth time in six games since leaving San Diego. Following the game, they headed to Cleveland, where they will spend an off day and then play the Guardians twice.
Musgrove demonstrated his ever-evolving pitch mix while striking out eight and walking none. The Pirates got seven hits, two of which did not leave the infield. Musgrove threw 92 pitches, 21 of them in the seventh inning, which was his last.
The right-hander almost had to be as good as he was. The Padres, who had scored at least six runs in each of the previous five games, had to scrape most of Sunday just to stay ahead.
They took a 1-0 lead on three singles in the third inning and capitalized on a two-out throwing error to score twice in the seventh. They finished their scoring with a pair of runs on four singles and a sacrifice fly in the ninth.
Padres manager Bob Melvin, generally as genteel as a country lawyer in a TV show from a bygone era, was ejected by home plate umpire Jeremie Rehak after emerging from the dugout hot about something following an RBI single by Roberto Perez in the seventh inning. It wasn't clear what Melvin was upset about or what prompted his first ejection while managing the Padres.
Perez's two-out line drive off the right-field wall scored former Padres minor leaguer Jack Suwinski, who had singled with one out, to make it 3-1.
Suarez replaced Musgrove to start the eighth and a baseball disaster almost ensued. Suarez walked the first two batters he faced and then had an infield single go off his glove before he left the game, gifting loaded bases to Hill.
Ben Gamel's fly ball to left field scored Bryan Reynolds to pull the Pirates to 3-2 before Hill got pinch-hitter Diego Castillo on a double-play grounder that went from shortstop Ha-seong Kim to second baseman CJ Abrams to first baseman Jake Cronenworth just quickly enough to be affirmed by replay challenge.
Pirates starter Mitch Keller was not as sharp as Musgrove but allowed just one run in a season-high six innings. Two of the hits he yielded were also infield singles.
The Padres hit three singles to the outfield in the third inning — Austin Nola's leadoff grounder up the middle, Trent Grisham's one-out grounder up the middle and Manny Machado's two-out line drive to left field.
They went up 3-0 in the seventh with two runs against Chase DeJong. They got that chance only because Pirates shortstop Cole Tucker stopped a 100.4-mph grounder by Nola, got up and bounced a throw that first baseman Yoshi Tsutsugo couldn't handle.
Abrams followed with a double down the left field line, and Grisham drove both runners home with a single lined to right.
After successive one-out singles by José Azocar and Nola in the ninth inning, Abrams drove in Azocar with a sacrifice fly. Nola went to third on Grisham's third single and scored on a single by Cronenworth.
