Oneil Cruz crushes 20th home run in win Sunday

Cruz was pulled from Saturday’s game and underwent an MRI on his left knee after suffering an injury while attempting to make a sliding catch in the outfield. While he suffered no structural damage, the Pirates will take a precautionary approach and hold him out of the finale.

The Pirates are calling Cruz’s exit precautionary, but they will have the 27-year-old talent undergo imaging to be sure there’s no structural damage. With nothing to play for — in terms of the postseason, anyway — there’s a pretty good chance Cruz won’t play in the finale, regardless.

Cruz struck out against Justin Verlander in his lone plate appearance prior to exiting the contest. He appeared to suffer the apparent lower-body injury when he went down awkwardly while trying to make a sliding catch in shallow center field in the early stages of the game. There should be an additional update on his status shortly.

Cruz worked Jackson Jobe for a walk to open the top of the second inning, then swiped second base and scored the game’s first run on an RBI single off the bat of Ryan O’Hearn. With that steal, he became just the third player in Pirates’ history to post consecutive 20-homer, 30-steal seasons — joining Barry Bonds and Andy Van Slyke. Cruz finished the night 1-for-3 with a walk and two runs scored and is now slashing .281/.368/.488 with 20 homers, 67 RBI and 30 stolen bases in only 418 plate appearances across 96 games in what has been an extremely impressive season.

It’s been obscured by his injuries, but Cruz has a very impressive .280/.367/.489 line in his 95 games this season. That’s a big step up from his career line of .233/.309/.425. He’ll probably try for at least one more steal this weekend, as he currently has 29 of those to go along with his 20 homers.

Despite making some real progress against southpaws this season, Cruz will take a seat against Cardinals lefty Matthew Liberatore in this matchup. The 27-year-old is up to 20 homers and 28 steals in just 410 plate appearances this season. He would’ve been a legitimate 30-homer, 40-steal threat had a hand injury not cost him more than two months of the year.

Cruz opened the scoring in the ballgame with a 433-foot (117.4-mph EV) blast off of Erick Fedde to open the fourth inning. He also added on a valuable insurance run with an RBI single off of Bryan Hudson in the eighth. The dynamic 27-year-old is having an outstanding all-around season at the plate, slashing .276/.362/.486 to go along with 18 homers, 62 RBI, 89 runs scored and 27 stolen bases in only 367 plate appearances across his 84 games.

He added his 26th stolen base of the season in the sixth inning. It’s his second three-walk game of the season. Cruz has stuffed the stat sheet in 78 games this year, with 17 homers. If he hadn’t missed a large chunk of time, he’d probably be regarded as one of the best fantasy picks this year as he’s rebounded nicely from 2025’s .200 batting average. He’s now hitting .270/.362/.483 on the season.

An unusual night for Cruz; his hits were all singles, and only one, a 106-mph grounder, was a hard-hit ball. It’s both his fifth career four-hit game and four-RBI game. He’s batted .311 with three homers and 12 RBI in 12 games since coming off the injured list.

One swing was all it took to win this one. The game remained scoreless into the ninth after an incredible pitcher’s duel between Paul Skenes and Michael King. With two outs and Padres’ closer Mason Miller on the mound, Cruz crushed a changeup for a solo home run to right field to give the Pirates the lead with what would be the game-winning run. The 27-year-old outfielder is up to 17 homers, 49 runs scored, 52 RBI, and 22 steals while slashing .260/.348/.491 across 310 plate appearances.