MLB: Kingham makes historic debut on Sweep over Cardinals

The Pittsburgh Pirates (17-11) beat the St. Louis Cardinals (15-12) 5:0 on Sunday and made a sweep against their division rival. Starting pitcher Nick Kingham made history in his Major League debut.

Kingham made an outstanding debut for the Pirates, carrying a perfect game into the seventh inning and then gave a 2-out single to Paul DeJong. After seven 1-hit-innings he was replaced with nine strikeouts.

He is only the second pitcher in the last 100 years after Johnny Cueto, who only allowed one hit and no walk in his debut (2008) and served nine strikeouts.

“That’s the way you plan it – you don’t want to leave anyone on base,” Kingham said afterwards. “It’s incredible how it happened. It just went well from the beginning. It sounds cheesy, but everyone helped. I was very lucky and very happy about it.”

The 20 batteries that Kingham has identified in series, however, were the most ever for a pitcher in the expansion era (since 1961) in his debut.

The Pirates scored four offensively in the sixth inning. Catcher Elias Diaz started with a 2-run single. Colin Moran raised with an RBI single and Adam Frazier closed the match with a hit-by-pitch on loaded bases.

This article was published without previous view by the Major League Baseball.