Rays’ Paredes homers before walking it off

TAMPA, Fla. — Isaac Paredes hit a solo homer in the eighth inning and a two-run single with two outs in the ninth, sending the Tampa Bay Rays to a 6-5 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Saturday.

Ji-Man Choi and Vidal Brujan reached on two-out walks before Jonathan Aranda’s pinch-hit single loaded the bases against David Bednar (3-2). Paredes then hit an opposite-field liner to right for his gameending single.

Paredes got the Rays within one in the eighth with his team-leading 10th homer — all over his last 25 games.

Former Astro Ralph Garza Jr. (1-2) worked two scoreless innings for the win in Tampa Bay’s fourth straight one-run game. It also was a Rays-record 11th consecutive game decided by two or fewer runs.

Jack Suwinski hit a three-run homer for the Pirates. JT Brubaker allowed three runs and nine hits in six innings.

Kluber allowed two runs and five hits. He was coming off a pair of losses when the righthander gave up two runs and four hits over six innings in both starts.

Cardinals 5, Cubs 3: Ivan Herrera hit a tiebreaking sacrifice fly in the eighth inning for his first career RBI and host St. Louis beat Chicago. Juan Yepez lined a one-out double to the left-field wall off Cubs reliever Mark Leiter Jr. (1-2) in the eighth, and pinchrunner Edmundo Sosa advanced to third on a wild pitch before scoring the go-ahead run on Herrera’s fly. Harrison Bader advanced to second on Herrera’s out and scored on Tommy Edman’s single to right field to extend the lead to 5-3. Ryan Helsley (3-0) pitched 12⁄3 scoreless innings to lower his ERA to 0.31. Miles Mikolas allowed one run on four hits while matching his season high of nine strikeouts.

Orioles 6, White Sox 2: Jorge Mateo homered and doubled to lead visiting Baltimore over Chicago Sox, giving them their first four-game winning streak this season. Lance Lynn (1-1) retired eight straight batters before Mateo lifted a solo homer just over the left-center fence to put Baltimore ahead in the third. Baltimore coughed up its advantage on two errors in the bottom of the inning, but Mateo struck back by belting his 10th double off the left-field wall. He scored to make it 2-1 on the next at-bat, when Leury Garcia erred on Cedric Mullins’ infield grounder.