Polanco's blast, meeting set up sweep

Prior to the start of their three-game series against the Brewers, the Pirates held a team meeting to discuss the current state of the club. Coming off of a sweep by the Indians and possessing the worst record in baseball at 4-17, the players gathered in hopes to regroup and turn things around.

The meeting worked. After earning back-to-back wins for the first time in the 2020 season, the Pirates completed a three-game series sweep on Sunday afternoon at PNC Park, beating the Brewers, 5-4.

"We really pumped each other up," Richard Rodriguez said of the meeting, this after earning the save with a 1-2-3 ninth. "We all recognized that we have plenty and enough to be able to do things like this, and we just reminded each other and we supported each other throughout the whole entire series."

While the wins on Friday and Saturday came with little doubt, Sunday's victory was different.

Originally ahead 2-0, the Pirates lost their lead in the top of fifth inning on a RBI double from Luis Urías. They then fell behind in the sixth when Brewers' first basemen Justin Smoak slapped a home run off left field foul pole with a runner on first base, making the score 4-2.

At that time, the two day vacation from the 2020 Pirates seemed to be over.

There were injuries, there were mistakes on the bases and runners were left in scoring position. It looked like the Pirates team that everyone saw in the first 21 games of the season had returned to the North Shore.

That all changed when Gregory Polanco, the poster child for the the Pirates' 2020 struggles, stepped up to bat in the bottom of the eighth inning. Brewers' righty David Phelps left a cutter over the plate. Polanco clobbered it 419 feet to center field for a two-run homer, plating the game's tying and winning runs: