PIRATES

JUSTIN K. ALLER / GETTY

Konnor Griffin's tagged out by the Nationals' Keibert Ruiz in the sixth inning Thursday at PNC Park.

Through the first 19 games of the season, the Pirates have won games that they've earned. They've also lost ones that perhaps they deserved to. The latter was the case in this afternoon's series finale, as the Pirates suffered an 8-7 extra-inning loss to the Nationals and were forced to settle for a split of the four-game set at PNC Park. 

Runs were given away on errors, mistakes on the mound were costly and untimely outs were recorded on the basepaths at times, causing the Pirates to fall behind on multiple occasions. Even a 15-hit effort, one highlighted by Marcell Ozuna's first home run in a Pirates uniform and five multi-hit performances, wasn't enough to erase the damage done by the mistakes. The Nationals scored four runs on errors, including an errant pickoff throw by Braxton Ashcraft in the fifth inning, and saw two runners come in to score against Yohan Ramirez, who hit Jacob Young with the bases loaded and allowed a run to score on a wild pitch. 

There was some resiliency shown in being able to overcome a lot of the obstacles. The Pirates had a chance to win in the end. But most of the issues they faced on this day were self-inflicted, and ultimately proved costly. 

"We have to play cleaner baseball, but the way that we continue to battle throughout the entire game, and had a chance at the end there, too," Don Kelly said. "I think it speaks to the fight and the resilience of the team and how we were able to stay in it, even if we weren't playing our best baseball. ... We (have to) continue to have conversations, work on it in between games. For the most part, we've played pretty well. We're going to continue to work every single day on cleaning those things up. Defense, base running. It's going to be the little things, like we've talked about, offensively. We need to continue to have good at-bats, pass the baton and play good defense and run the bases well."