MLB Rankings: Greatest Hits in Week-22
1. Corey Dickerson, 60 percent
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Through seven innings of Monday’s Pirates-Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park, Pittsburgh held a 4-2 lead. Tasked with navigating the bottom of the eighth, Pirates reliever Richard Rodriguez got things off to a good start. He fanned Logan Morrison and Rhys Hoskins. At that moment the odds of a Pirate victory reached 90 percent.
The potential third out, however, was Bryce Harper, who has begun living up to his paycheck. Harper homered to right-center, narrowing the Phillies deficit to a single run. J. T. Realmuto followed with an infield single that Colin Moran could not make a play on at third.
Still, Pittsburgh’s victory prospects measured 76 percent as Dickerson came to the plate. Rodriguez got him in a 1-2 hole, then delivered a fastball that Dickerson sent over the center-field wall for a two-run home run. In giving Philadelphia a sudden 5-4 lead, the home run raised the home team’s victory prospects all the way to 84 percent.
Josh Bell’s ninth-inning home run tied the game and sent it in extra innings where, as previously noted, Sean Rodriguez would win it with a walk-off blast. But Rodriguez’s winner would never have occurred without the eighth inning heroics of Harper and, particularly, Dickerson.